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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph.D., L.H.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



LORD MACAULAY 



ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE 



Eottgmang' dgngltefr Claggfcg 
MACAULAY'S 

ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE 



EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

PRESTON C. FARRAR, A.M. 

Head of Department of English, Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn 




NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 
I9IO 



Copyright, IQIO, by 
Longmans, Green, and Co. 



->> 






©CLA265889 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction • • * x 

I. Life of Macaulay ix 

II. Characteristics of Macaulay 's Personality and Work . xx 

III. The Essay on Clive xxvii 

IV. A Brief Sketch of the History of India . . . . xxx 

Bibliography xxxvii 

Chronological Table — Macaulay xxxix 

Chronological Table — Clive xliv 

Essay on Lord Clive 3 

Notes . . ^ . . 107 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/macaulaysessayon10maca 



INTRODUCTION 

I. Life of Macaulay 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the most popular Eng- 
lish essayist and historian of the nineteenth century, was 
born at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, on the 25th of 
October, 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, a descend- 
ant of a family of Scotch Presbyterian ministers, was a 
man of ability and high character, who gave his life to 
the suppression of slavery in the English colonies. His 
mother, who was the daughter of a Quaker, is described 
as a woman of " affectionate temper, yet clear-headed and 
firm withal." To the influence of these serious-minded 
and unselfish parents Macaulay evidently owes some of 
the best traits in his character. 

He was a remarkably precocious child. "From the 
time that he was three years old," says Trevelyan, 1 "he 
read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before 
the fire, with his book on the ground and a piece of bread- 
and-butter in his hand." From the same early age he 
showed unusual facility in the use of language. As he 
took his walk, "he would hold forth to his companion, 
whether jiurse or mother, telling interminable stories out 
of his own head, or repeating what he had been reading 
in language far above his years." Many amusing instances 
of the quaint maturity of his speech are given by his 
biographer. On one occasion when he was but four years 

1 See Bibliography (p. xxxvii) for a note on Trevelyan's biography.. 



x INTRODUCTION 

old, a servant spilled some hot coffee on his legs. When 
his hostess, a little later, asked how he felt, he replied, 
" Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." It must 
not be supposed, however, that language like this " pro- 
ceeded from affectation or conceit; for all testimony 
declares that a more simple and natural child never 
lived, or a more lively and merry one." 

The boy's writing showed even greater precocity than 
his speech. Before he reached the age of eight, he had 
written a compendium of universal history rilling about a 
quire of paper, and had composed many "poems," which 
Mrs. Hannah More pronounced "quite extraordinary for 
such a baby." "It is worthy of note," writes his nephew, 
"that the voluminous writings of his childhood, dashed 
off at headlong speed in the odds and ends of leisure from 
school study and nursery routine, are not only perfectly 
correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same 
lucidity of meaning and scrupulous accuracy in punctu- 
ation and the other minor details of the literary art which 
characterize his mature work." 

The greater part of Macaulay's childhood was spent at 
Clapham, a suburb of London. When he was twelve 
years old he was sent to a small private school which was 
then situated near Cambridge, but was removed two 
years later to Aspenden Hall in Hertfordshire. Here, 
under good instruction, he laid the foundation of sound 
scholarship in Latin and Greek, and found time besides 
to read great numbers of books for his own pleasure. 

In 1818 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where 
he spent six delightful years. His enjoyment of his life 
here was evidently due less to the regular work of the 
university than to the leisure and liberty and the oppor- 
tunities for unlimited reading and attractive companion- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

ship which the place afforded. Next to reading, Macaulay 
seems to have enjoyed talking more than anything else. 
He was always ready to talk, and the able and interesting 
young men with whom he was brought into intimate 
association, furnished the stimulus of intellectual combat 
that called forth all his powers. The most brilliant mem- 
ber of the little group was Charles Austin, who is said to 
have been "the only man who ever succeeded in domina- 
ting Macaulay," and who is believed to have won him 
over to the Whig party, and away from his inherited 
allegiance to the Tories. Witnesses of the scenes in 
which these two and their friends took part "declare that 
they have never since heard such conversation in the 
most renowned of social circles." The following incident 
told by Trevelyan gives some support to this opinion. 
"While on a visit to Lord Landsdowne at Bo wood, 
Austin and Macaulay happened to get upon college topics 
one morning at breakfast. When the meal was finished 
they drew their chairs to either end of the chimney-piece, 
and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if they 
were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. 
The whole company, ladies, artists, politicians, and diners- 
out, formed a silent circle round the two Cantabs, and 
with a short break for lunch, never stirred till the bell 
warned them that it was time to dress for dinner." 
In the more formal discussions of the Union Debating 
Society, also, Macaulay was one of the ablest speakers. 
The training that he received in this organization was 
excellent preparation for his work later in Parliament. 

Macaulay's interest in the social life of Cambridge, and 
his hatred and neglect of mathematics prevented him 
from winning the highest university honours. But he 
twice gained the chancellor's medal for English verse, and 



xii INTRODUCTION 

he also won a prize and a scholarship for his classical 
attainments. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 
1822, he continued his studies at the university for two 
years in the hope of winning a fellowship. In 1824 his 
desire was gratified by his election as a fellow of Trinity 
College with an income of three hundred pounds a year 
for seven years. 

Macaulay's success was especially welcome to him, 
because during his stay at the university, his father, who 
had supposed himself to be worth a hundred thousand 
pounds, failed in business, and the duty of supporting the 
family fell largely upon his eldest son. This duty Ma- 
caulay undertook with the utmost cheerfuless. "He 
unlearned," says Trevelyan, "the very notion of framing 
his method of life with a view to his own pleasure; and 
such was his high and simple nature that it may well be 
doubted whether it ever crossed his mind that to live 
wholly for others was a sacrifice at all." 

In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar, but got little 
practice and soon gave up all serious thought of following 
the legal profession. In the meantime he had begun to 
achieve success of a very different kind. Before he left 
Cambridge, he had made a number of contributions to 
Knight's Quarterly Magazine: two or three spirited battle 
poems, a few short pieces of fictitious narrative, and other 
prose articles, which showed him already to be possessed 
of a very striking and effective style. But his first great 
literary success came in 1825. In August of that year, 
in the Edinburgh Review, at that time perhaps the most 
celebrated and influential periodical in England, appeared 
Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Its success was "splendid 
and decisive." The reading public had suddenly become 
aware that a new master of English prose had appeared. 



INTRODUCTION ' xiii 

Like Lord Byron, after the publication of the first two 
cantos of Childe Harold, Macaulay "awoke one morning 
and found himself famous." In the England of that day, 
literary success brought with it social distinction, and the 
Macaulay breakfast table was covered with cards of 
invitation to dinner from every quarter of London. The 
social prominence which began for Macaulay in this 
way was greatly increased by his triumphs in Parliament 
and especially by his brilliant ability as a talker. The 
one evidence of appreciation of his essay, however, which 
most pleased him was the comment with which Jeffrey, 
the great editor of the Edinburgh, acknowledged the 
receipt of his manuscript, — "The more I think, the less 
I can conceive where you picked up that style." 

After the publication of The Essay on Milton, Macaulay 
became a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review. 
In fact, for the next twenty years he was its most impor- 
tant contributor. During the first eight years of this 
period he published, on the average, about three essays 
a year in its columns. These articles brought him fame 
and some money. But it must not be supposed that 
writing them was his chief business. Instead, they occu- 
pied him only during the intervals of his very active 
work in the House of Commons and in the various govern- 
ment positions which he held. 

In 1828 he was made a commissioner of bankruptcy. 
This office, together with his fellowship and his contribu- 
tions to the Edinburgh Review, gave him an income of 
about a thousand pounds a year. Two years later, just 
before the memorable struggle over the parliamentary 
reform bill, he was asked to stand, as they say in England, 
for Parliament, and was elected member for the borough 
of Calne. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

"And so," writes Trevelyan, "on the eve of the most 
momentous conflict that ever was fought out by speech 
and vote within the walls of a senate-house, the young 
recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that party 
whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow, 
and the history of whose past he was destined eloquently, 
and perhaps imperishably, to record." 

Macaulay's success in Parliament was as quickly 
achieved and as continuous as was his success in litera- 
ture. His first great triumph came with his first speech 
on the Reform Bill in 1831. "When he sat down the 
Speaker sent for him and told him that, in all his pro- 
longed experience, he had never seen the House in such 
a state of excitement. . . . 'Portions of the speech,' said 
Sir Robert Peel, 'were as beautiful as anything I ever 
heard or read. It reminded me of the old times.' The 
names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that 
evening in everybody's mouth." The reputation which 
Macaulay gained on this notable occasion was established 
and strengthened by his subsequent speeches. Of his 
speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill, Jeffrey 
said, " It puts him clearly at the head of the great speakers, 
if not the debaters, of the House." After his speech on 
the India Bill, which he himself considered the best he 
had ever made, an old member said to him, Sir, having 
heard that speech may console the young people for 
never having heard Mr. Burke." "It may well be ques- 
tioned," says Mr. Morrison, "whether Macaulay was so 
well endowed for any career as that of a great orator." 
So great was his reputation that whenever it was known 
that he was to speak there would be a great rush of mem- 
bers and spectators to hear him. Such an incident — 
on the occasion of Macaulay's speaking after a long 



INTRODUCTION xv 

absence from the House — is described by a contemporary 
newspaper: 

"The talk [in the House] was not interesting — on a 
Wednesday it seldom is — and you were loitering along 
the committee lobby upstairs, wondering which of the 
rooms you should take next, when, as you paused uncer- 
tain, you were bumped against by somebody. He begged 
your pardon, and rushed on; a member; a stout member; 
a man you couldn't conceive in a run, and yet he's run- 
ning like mad. You are still staring at him, when two 
more men trot past you, one one each side, and they are 
members too. The door close to you, marked 'Members' 
Entrance,' is flung open, and five members dash from it, 
and plunge furiously down the lobby. More doors open; 
more members rush out; members are tearing past you, 
from all points, but in one direction. Then wigs and 
gowns appear. Their owners tell you, with happy faces, 
that their committees have adjourned; and then come a 
third class, the gentlemen of the Press, hilarious. Why, 
what's the matter? Matter? Macaulay is up! It was 
an announcement that one had not heard for years, and 
the passing of the word had emptied committee-rooms as, 
of old, it emptied clubs. 

"You join the runners in a moment, and are in the 
gallery in time to see the senators, who had start of you, 
perspiring in their places. It was true. He was up, 
and in for a long speech. . . . The old voice, the old man- 
ner, and the old style — glorious speaking ! Well pre- 
pared, carefully elaborated, confessedly essayish; but 
spoken with perfect art and consummate management; 
the grand conversation of a man of the world, confiding 
his learning, his recollections, and his logic to a party of 
gentlemen, and just raising his voice enough to be heard 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

through the room. Such it was while he was only open- 
ing his subject, and waiting for his audience; but as the 
House filled, which it did with marvellous celerity, he 
got prouder and more oratorical; and then he poured out 
his speech, with rapidity increasing after every sentence, 
till it became a torrent of the richest words, carrying his 
hearers with him into enthusiasm, and yet not leaving 
them time to cheer. A torrent of words — that is the 
only description of Macaulay's style, when he was warmed 
into speed. And such words! Why, it wasn't four in 
the afternoon; lunch hardly digested; and the quiet, 
reserved English gentlemen were as wild with delight as 
an opera-house, after Grisi, at ten. You doubt it? See 
the division; and yet, before Mr. Macaulay had spoken., 
you might have safely bet fifty to one that Lord Hotham 
would have carried his bill. After that speech the bill 
was not thrown out, but pitched out." 

As a reward for his services in support of the Reform 
Bill Macaulay was made a member, and afterwards 
secretary, of the Board of Control, " which represented 
the crown in its relations with the East India directors." 
This position brought him into close touch with East 
Indian affairs, and prepared the way for a more impor- 
tant appointment. 

In 1833 he was chosen a member of the Supreme Coun- 
cil of India at a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. 
Although Macaulay had no desire for great wealth, he 
longed for independence and for the means of restoring 
ease and comfort to his father's family; and he was sure 
that from the large salary offered him he could, in a few 
years, save a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Accord- 
ingly he accepted the position, and early in 1834 sailed 
for India. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

While in India Macaulay rendered very valuable ser- 
vice to the government and the people. Besides doing 
the regular work of his office, he served voluntarily as 
president of the Committee of Public Instruction, which 
had the arduous task of organizing an entire educational 
system for the country. It is largely due to Macaulay 
that English, rather than the native tongues, was made 
the language of instruction in much of the work of the 
schools, and that, in this way, the treasuries of European 
literature and science were opened to the people of India. 

Another service which he rendered to India is hardly 
less important. He was chairman of a committee ap- 
pointed to draw up two new codes of laws for the empire, 
a Penal Code, and a Code of Criminal Procedure. On 
account of the illness of other members of the committee, 
the larger part of the work involved in this laborious 
undertaking was done by Macaulay. In reply to a 
criticism that the work was not finished sooner, he wrote, 
"I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there are several 
chapters in the code on which I have been employed for 
months; of which I have changed the whole plan ten or 
twelve times; which contain not a single word as it origi- 
nally stood; and with which I am very far indeed from 
being satisfied. The time during which the commission 
has sat is as nothing compared with the time during which 
the work will produce good, or evil, to India." As to the 
value of the code an eminent English lawyer and judge 
says, "Lord Macaulay's great work was far too daring 
and original to be accepted at once. It was finally 
enacted in i860 after being revised by Sir Barnes Pea- 
cock. The draft and the revision are both eminently 
creditable to their authors; and the result of their suc- 
cessive efforts has been to reproduce in a concise and even 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

beautiful form the spirit of the law of England, the most 
technical, the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of 
all systems of criminal law." "If it be asked," says 
Trevelyan, " whether or not the Penal Code fulfills the 
ends for which it was framed, the answer may safely be 
left to the gratitude of Indian civilians, the younger of 
whom carry it about in their saddle-bags and the older 
in their heads." 

While in India Macaulay was also instrumental in 
doing away with the censorship of the press, and in mak- 
ing the administration of justice the same for both Eng- 
lishmen and natives. The latter reform made him very 
unpopular with a number of his countrymen in Calcutta, 
and subjected him to the most virulent abuse, which he 
bore with "unruffled equanimity." 

In January, 1838, Macaulay set sail for England. He 
had been able to save money more rapidly than he had 
expected and had acquired a modest but comfortable 
fortune. Before the end of 1835 he had written to his 
friend Ellis, "What my course will be when I return to 
England is very doubtful. But I am half determined to 
abandon politics, and to give myself wholly to letters; 
to undertake some great historical work which may be 
at once the business and the amusement of my life." 
This desire, however, he was not able for some time to 
realize. His sense of duty to his party and his political 
friends drew him again into politics. From 1838 to 1847, 
and again from 1852 to 1856, he represented Edinburgh 
in Parliament, the second time receiving his seat as an 
unasked recompense for his unwarranted defeat five years 
before. Twice during this period he held important 
government offices, first as Secretary at War, and after- 
wards as Paymaster-general. But although he rendered 



INTRODUCTION xix 

valuable service to his party, his interest in politics con- 
tinued to decrease. 

Until 1844 he wrote a good many articles for the Edin- 
burgh Review. In 1842 he published a volume of poems, 
The Lays of Ancient Rome, which was received with 
great popular favour. But the literary work in which 
Macaulay was becoming more and more interested was 
his History of England from the Accession of James II. 
In 1841 he had written, "I have at last begun my his- 
torical labours ... I shall not be satisfied unless I pro- 
duce something which shall for a few days supersede the 
last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." 
The reception which was given the first two volumes on 
their publication in 1848 must have more than satisfied 
this ambition of their author. The work met with remark- 
able success both in England and America. Within a 
few months after the date of publication, Harper and 
Brothers wrote to Macaulay, "No work, of any kind, has 
ever so completely taken our whole country by storm." 
The third and fourth volumes were published in 1855, 
and the fifth and last volume after Macaulay's death. 
They were received with even greater favour than the first 
two. Only two years after the publication of the third 
and fourth volumes, Longmans, the publishers, paid the 
author $100,000. in a single check, as part of his royalty. 
Of the whole history hundreds of thousands of copies in 
English alone have been sold, and the work has been 
translated into every important European tongue. 

The only other important literary work that Macaulay 
did during his later years was the writing of five brief 
biographies for the Encyclopedia Britannica — the articles 
on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and 
William Pitt. They are among the best of his works. 



xx INTRODUCTION 

In 1852 Macaulay was seriously ill, his physician pro- 
nouncing the action of his heart much deranged. After 
this illness he never fully regained his old good health, 
but, withdrawing more and more from public affairs, he 
passed his remaining years in the quiet of his garden and 
his library at Holly Lodge in Kensington, still working 
when he could, and still enjoying the company of a few 
intimate friends. Many marks of distinction came to 
him during these last years both from his own country 
and the continent. Among these was his elevation to 
the peerage in 1857 as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. But 
he did not long enjoy his honours. On December 28, 1859, 
he died. He is buried in the Poets' Corner in West- 
minster Abbey. 

II. Characteristics or Macaulay's Personality and 
Work 

Whatever shortcomings may be found in Macaulay's 
literary work, no serious fault has ever been discovered 
in his personal character. Throughout his long political 
career not a word of real suspicion was ever breathed 
against his honesty. Whenever his personal interests 
conflicted with his sense of duty, he seems never to have 
given them a moment's thought. He once voted for a 
bill that took away his own office, and .once opposed a 
measure with the full expectation that his action would 
cost him his position. No wonder Sydney Smith could 
say that Macaulay was incorruptible. 

His conduct in the more private relations of life seems 
to have been no less admirable. His unselfish acceptance 
of the burden of his father's household has already been 
mentioned. Moreover he brought to that household not 
merely financial support, but such an abundance of 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

cheerfulness and gaiety and fun that the younger chil- 
dren were hardly aware of the money troubles of the 
family. Macaulay never married, chiefly because, as he 
said, he never fell in love; but all the affection of his 
nature was poured out on his sisters and afterwards on 
their children. Throughout his life he seems to have 
been singularly tender-hearted, generous, and courageous. 
The only criticisms that have been seriously made against 
him are that the strength of his convictions sometimes 
amounted to prejudice, and that he was sometimes per- 
haps too intolerant of those whom he thought to be in 
the wrong. 

Any discussion of Macaulay's personality would be 
incomplete without some description of his appearance. 
"Macaulay's outward man," writes Trevelyan, "was 
never better described than in two sentences of Praed's 
Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. 'There 
came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with 
a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat-pocket. 
Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where 
there is an expression of great power, or of great good- 
humour, or both, you do not regret its absence.' This 
picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there 
is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a 
powerful and rugged cast; but so constantly lighted up by 
every joyful and ennobling emotion that it mattered little 
if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely 
than handsome. While conversing at table, no one 
thought him other than good-looking; but when he 
rose, he was seen to be short and stout in figure. 'At 
Holland House, the other day/ writes his sister Mar- 
garet, in September, 1831, 'Tom met Lady Lyndhurst 
for the first time. She said to him, "Mr. Macaulay, you 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

are so different to what I expected. I thought you were 
dark and thin, but you are fair, and, really, Mr. Macaulay, 
you are fat."' He at all times sat and stood straight, 
full, and square." 

Of Macaulay's remarkable intellect it is difficult to 
speak adequately. His two most noticeable mental char- 
acteristics seem to have been the unusual quickness with 
which his mind worked, and his wonderfully retentive 
memory. His mental quickness appears especially in his 
reading. "He read books faster than other people 
skimmed them, and skimmed them as fast as anyone 
else could turn the leaves." This unusual ability, accom- 
panied as it was by a passionate fondness for reading, 
made it possible for Macaulay to read great quantities 
of books. Writing of his journey to India he said, "Except 
at meals, I hardly exchanged a word with any human 
being. I devoured Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, 
and English; folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos." But 
what is even more surprising than the great extent of 
his reading is the fact that he apparently remembered 
nearly everything he ever read, good and bad, important 
and unimportant, alike. This accounts for one striking 
characteristic of his literary work. He seems to know 
everything even remotely connected with the subject in 
hand, and to have an illustration ready for every fact 
and circumstance. 

These very abilities, however, suggest, if they are not 
partly responsible for, certain noticeable faults in his 
work. His abundant knowledge of literature and history 
sometimes led him to assume too great knowledge in his 
readers, and to overload his writing with unfamiliar illus- 
tration and allusion. Likewise his great memory doubt- 
less strengthened his confidence in his knowledge, and that 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

feeling of certainty, whatever its cause, extended also to 
matters of mere opinion. "There is," says Mark Pat- 
tison, "an overwhelming confidence about his tone. . . . 
His propositions have no qualifications. Uninstructed 
readers like this assurance as they like a physician who 
has no doubt about their case. But a sense of distrust 
grows apon the more circumspect reader. . . . We inevi- 
tably think of a saying attributed to Lord Melbourne, 'I 
wish I were as cock-sure of any one thing as Macaulay 
is of everything.'" 

There were many things, moreover, about which Ma- 
caulay had no reason to be "cock-sure." His interests 
and his reading were one-sided. He had a wide knowledge 
of the literature and the political history of several coun- 
tries. Bit he knew little of philosophy, of modern science, 
or of the best work that was being done in history and 
poetry by his contemporaries. His interests, apart from 
the political struggles in which he was engaged, seem to 
have been almost wholly in the past. The great move- 
ments of his own day in scientific and religious thought, 
which have made that period memorable in the history 
of the world, apparently did not affect him at all. This 
shortcoming is the more readily understood in the light 
of another: he shows little evidence of having thought 
deeply 01 any subject. His great abilities seem to have 
been exercised not in arriving at conclusions, but in 
expressirg and supporting opinions apparently acquired 
with little thinking. As a consequence critics find a lack 
of depti, of subtlety, of fine discrimination, of insight 
into character, in his literary work. The thought of much 
of it tley find commonplace if not shallow. It is not 
filled with new ideas or new ways of looking at old ones. 
It does not stir the depths of men's minds, or set them 



XXIV 



INTRODUCTION 



thinking, as does the work of truly original writers like 
Carlyle and Emerson. 

But perhaps it is unfair to find fault with an author 
for not doing what he did not attempt to do, for not 
being somebody else than he is. And it is certainly unrea- 
sonable to let an author's shortcomings blind one to his 
very evident merits. Macaulay's work has certain great 
merits. He has a very unusual power of narrative. Few 
men have equalled or approached him in the ability to 
present the forward movement of events or the outward 
spectacle of things in a vivid and memorable wfy. His 
style has the admirable qualities of vigour and of ease and 
rapidity of movement. He brings out his ideis in the 
most striking and interesting way possible. Bui perhaps 
the most praiseworthy quality of his writing is its unfail- 
ing clearness. He seems to have determined above all 
other things to make his meaning clear. After the pub- 
lication of the first two volumes of his history, i group of 
workingmen to whom the book had been reid aloud 
passed a vote of thanks to him for having writ en a his- 
tory which workingmen could understand. 

Macaulay's method of writing shows how hq attained 
these admirable qualities. The following accourjt is given 
by Trevelyan: 

"The main secret of Macaulay's success la] in this, 
that to extraordinary fluency and facility he utrited pa- 
tient, minute, and persistent diligence. He w^ll knew, 
as Chaucer knew before him, that 

'There is na workeman 
That can bothe worken wel and hastilie. 
This must be done at leisure parfaitlie.' 

If his mehod of composition ever comes into fashion, 
books probably will be better, and undoubtedly will be 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

shorter. As soon as he had got into his head all the 
information relating to any particular episode, he 
would sit down and write off the whole story at a head- 
long pace; sketching in the outlines under the genial and 
audacious impulse of a first conception; and securing in 
black and white each idea, and epithet, and turn of phrase, 
as it flowed straight from his busy brain to his rapid 
fingers. His manuscript, at this stage, to the eyes of 
any one but himself, appeared to consist of column after 
column of dashes and flourishes, in which a straight line, 
with a half -formed letter at each end and another in the 
middle, did duty for a word. It was from a chaos of 
such hieroglyphics that Lady Trevelyan, after her brother's 
death, deciphered that account qf the last days of William 
which fitly closes the History. 

"As soon as Macaulay had finished his rough draft, 
he began to fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap 
every morning; written in so large a hand, and with such 
a multitude of erasures, that the whole six pages were, 
on an average, compressed into two pages of print. This 
portion he called his 'task,' and he was never quite at 
ease unless he completed it daily. More he seldom 
sought to accomplish; for he had learned from long 
experience that this was as much as he could do at his 
best; and, except when at his best, he never would work 
at all. 

"Macaulay never allowed a sentence to pass muster 
until it was as good as he could make it. He thought 
little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a more 
lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of reconstruct- 
ing a paragraph for the sake of one happy stroke or apt 
illustration. . . . 

"Macaulay deserved the compliment which Cecil paid 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

to Sir Walter Raleigh as the supreme of commendations: 
'I know that he can labour terribly.' ... 

"When at length, after repeated revisions, Macaulay 
liad satisfied himself that his writing was as good as he 
could make it, he would submit it to the severest of all 
tests, that of being read aloud to others." 

Macaulay' s writings may be summed up as follows: 

i. The Essays. Macaulay's Essays are perhaps his 
most popular works. They have done more, it has been 
.said, to popularize literature and history, than have the 
writings of any other man. Most of them deal with 
English history or with English authors. A few deal 
with foreign history, and a few are controversial in char- 
acter. Among the best of the essays are those on Hallam, 
Sir William Temple, Clive, Warren Hastings, and Dr. 
Johnson. Taken as a body the essays are sometimes 
prejudiced and sometimes untrustworthy. They contain 
character studies and literary criticism which are often 
undiscriminating and undiscerning. Macaulay himself 
wrote, "I have never written a page of criticism on poetry 
or the fine arts which I would not burn if I had the power." 
Yet all of the essays are brilliantly written, and give us 
many interesting discussions of great questions, and many 
striking and vivid portrayals of men and events and 
periods. 

2. The Poems. Macaulay did not write much poetry. 
He did not attempt poetry of the highest kind. But in 
what he did attempt he accomplished his purpose admi- 
rably. In his battle poems, Ivry and Naseby, and in the 
Lays of Ancient Rome, he has given us some of the most 
stirring and vigorous narratives in verse that we have. 
The simplicity and directness of his best passages, espe- 
cially in Horatius, leads Mr. Morrison to ask "not whether 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

his work is good, but whether in its kind it has often been 
surpassed." 

3. The Speeches. Enough, no doubt, has already been 
said of Macaulay's great ability as an orator. His pub- 
lished speeches contain some of his best work, and are 
deserving of far more attention than they now receive. 
Among the best are those on the Reform Bill, on the 
India Bill, and on Ireland. His speeches on the latter 
subject, says Mr. Morrison, "would alone suffice to place 
him in the rank of high far-seeing statesmen." 

4. The History of England. Much has been said 
already about the writing and reception of this most 
important of Macaulay's works. It is a brilliant, pic- 
turesque, and interesting, though not always impartial 
account of the reigns of James II and William III. In 
his views of history, and indeed of literature, Macaulay 
is prejudiced by his Whig partisanship. 

III. The Essay on Clive 

Macaulay was exceptionally well qualified to write 
on the life of Clive. He was very familiar with the his- 
tory of English politics in the eighteenth century, and he 
had had unusual opportunities to know India, its people 
and its government, at first hand. 

Even before his sojourn in India he had shown an 
unusual interest in the country. As member and secre- 
tary of the Board of Control he had to deal constantly 
with Indian affairs. But "his speeches and essays teem 
with expressions of a far deeper than official interest in 
India and her people; and his minutes remain on record 
to prove that he did not affect the sentiment for a literary 
or oratorical purpose. The attitude of his own mind 
with regard to our Eastern empire is depicted in the 



xxvm INTRODUCTION 

passage on Burke, in the essay on Warren Hastings, 1 
which commences with the words, 'His knowledge of 
India,' and concludes with the sentence, 'Oppression in 
Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the 
streets of London.'" 

Macaulay's strong interest in India, it is interesting to 
note here, continued throughout his life. On August 28, 
1857, at the time of the Sepoy Mutiny, he wrote in his 
journal, "A great day in my life. I staid at home, very 
sad about India. Not that I have any doubt about the 
result; but the news is heart-breaking. I went, very low, 
to dinner, and had hardly begun to eat when a mes- 
senger came with a letter from Palmerston. An offer 
of a peerage. I was very much surprised . . . but God 
knows that the poor women at Delhi and Cawnpore are 
more in my thoughts than my coronet." And later he 
writes, "The Indian troubles have affected my spirits 
more than any public events in the whole course of my 
life." Many other passages in his journal show his deep 

interest in the situation in India at this time. 
J 
As early as June 15, 18$ 7 ,the year after the appearance 

of Sir John Malcolm's Life of Clive, Macaulay wrote to 
Macvey Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, "I 
will try my hand on Temple, and on Lord Clive." During 
the next two years he seems to have kept the subject in 
mind, but it was not until the summer and fall of 1839 
that he actually wrote the essay. In July of that year, 
he wrote to Napier, "I mean to give you a life of Clive 
for October. The subject is a grand one and admits of 
decorations and illustrations innumerable." On Septem- 
ber 2, he wrote, "I shall work on Clive as hard as I can, 

See Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings in this series, pp. 
114, 115. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

and make the paper as short as I can; but I am afraid 
that I cannot positively pledge myself either as to time 
or as to length. I rather think, however, that the article 
will take." In November he wrote, "I send back the 
paper on Clive. Remember to let me have a revise. I 
have altered the last sentence, so as to make it clearer 
and more harmonious; but I cannot consent to leave out 
the well-earned compliment to my dear old friend, Lord 
William Bentinck." 

The essay appeared in the January (1840) number of 
the Edinburgh Review. Macaulay's own comments will 
serve best to show how it was received. The next year 
in writing about a proposed paper on Warren Hastings, 
he said, "I am not so vain as to think that I can do it 
full justice; but the success of my paper on Clive has 
emboldened me." Later he wrote, "The paper on Clive 
took greatly. That on Hastings, though in my own 
opinion by no means equal to that on Clive, has been 
even more successful." The comment of his nephew on 
the success of the two essays is also interesting. Writing 
of Macaulay's first impressions of India, he says, "The 
fresh and vivid character of those impressions, the gen- 
uine and multiform interest excited in him by all that 
met his ear or eye, explain the secret of the charm which 
enabled him in after-days to overcome the distaste for 
Indian literature entertained by that personage who, for 
want of a better, goes by the name of the general reader. 
Macaulay reversed in his own case the experience of those 
countless writers on Indian themes who have successively 
blunted their pens against the passive indifference of the 
British public; for his faithful but brilliant studies of 
the history of our Eastern empire are to this day imcom- 
parably the most popular of his works." 



xxxn INTRODUCTION 

of Delhi, and had himself proclaimed Padshah, or sover- 
eign of the country. 

In this way Baber, who was of Mongol as well as of 
Turkish descent, founded a dynasty, which, though 
probably more Turkish than Mongol, has always been 
known as the Mogul (or Mongol) dynasty. Though 
of the same blood as Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan, 
Baber was no barbarian. "Like the other kings of 
his family he loved literature and the society of 
polished and learned men." Fearless, strong, and at 
times even ferocious, he was also generous and affec- 
tionate and "inspired by a tender and passionate ad- 
miration for the beauty of nature." Notwithstanding 
his brilliant victories Baber did little more than gain 
a foothold in India. He died before he had time to 
extend his conquests very widely or to convert his 
military occupation into a well-ordered government. 
This task was not accomplished until the reign of his 
grandson Akbar. 

Akbar, whose reign from 1556 to 1605 is almost con- 
temporaneous with that of Queen Elizabeth, was the best 
and the greatest of the Moguls. He extended his empire 
until it included the greater part of Afghanistan and all 
of India except the southern part of the peninsula. But 
his real greatness is shown more in his far-seeing states- 
manship than in his conquests. He wished to have all 
races, Hindoos as well as Mussulmans, work together for 
the common good. Accordingly he treated the Hindoos 
with great toleration. He sought marriage alliances with 
native princes. He chose Hindoos as his intimate friends, 
and raised them to high positions in the state. He showed 
the same wisdom, also, in the organization of his empire, 
and the same intellectual breadth in the liberality of his 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

religious views/ in his enjoyment of the arts, and in his 
patronage of learned men and artists of all kinds. 

Akbar's successor, his son Jahangir, though mentally 
and morally inferior- to his father, was able to preserve 
intact the empire which he inherited. The next emperor, 
his son Shahjahan, who came to the throne in 1628, 
accomplished the same result, and even extended his 
rule a little farther to the south. His reign is described 
as a period of peaceful prosperity. It is made memo- 
rable by the unexampled splendour of his court, in which 
the display of jewels, including the famous Peacock 
Throne, "was almost beyond belief." But his reign is 
even more noteworthy for the magnificent buildings 
which it produced. The mausoleum of the empress 
Mumtaj Mahall at Agra, commonly known as the Taj, 
is considered "the crowning glory of Mogul architecture." 

In 1659, Aurangzeb, the third son of Shahjahan, after 
overcoming his three brothers, made his father a prisoner 
and placed himself upon the throne. Although he was 
one of the strongest of the Mogul rulers, his long reign 
of nearly fifty years was in the end a failure, and marks 
the beginning of the downfall of the empire. Unlike his 
great ancestor Akbar, he was narrowly intolerant of all 
who were not Mohammedans, and his failure was due to 
his obstinate attempt to force Mohammedanism upon 
the great Hindoo population of the country. 

The rapid falling apart of the empire after Aurangzeb's 
death in 1707 is sufficiently described for our present 
purpose in Macaulay's essay itself (pages 12 and 13). 
Before beginning the essay, however, it will be well for 
the reader to consider briefly the growth of European 
influence in India before the time of Clive. 
1 See Tennyson's Akbar's Dream. 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

Since the Mohammedan occupation of Egypt in the 
seventh century, the route from Europe to India by way 
of the Red Sea had been closed to Europeans, and the 
trade by sea had been entirely under Mohammedan con- 
trol. But in 1498 Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese navi- 
gator, completing the work of his countryman Dias, 
sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and reached the 
western coast of India. The discovery of this new route 
opened up great possibilities for the nations of western 
Europe. The Portuguese were the first to take advan- 
tage of the new opportunities offered, and following up 
the expedition of de Gama with many others, they soon 
made themselves masters of the Eastern Seas, and built 
fortresses or established trading stations at several points 
along the western coast of India and at other places in 
the East. 

But the Portuguese supremacy was short-lived. Before 
the close of the sixteenth century it began to decline, and 
in the first half of the next century the control of the 
commerce of the East passed to the Dutch. In 1602 all 
the Dutch trading companies were combined under the 
name of "The United East India Company of the Nether- 
lands," which quickly became a rich and powerful cor- 
poration. The Dutch drove the Portuguese from Ceylon, 
seized some of their posts on the mainland, and estab- 
lished others of their own. But their chief interest in 
the East was in the Malay Archipelago, where they 
acquired much more extensive possessions. 

The supremacy of Holland in East Indian waters was 
not long undisputed. England had been making rapid 
strides as a naval power, and the commerce of India was 
fast becoming an object of national importance to her. 
"The struggle during the seventeenth century between 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

the Dutch and the English for command of the Eastern 
seas and control of the sea-borne trade was long and 
severe. The general result was that the Dutch retained 
their leading position in the Malay Archipelago and 
Ceylon, but failed to attain considerable power in India." 

In 1600 the English East India Company was incor- 
porated under the title, "The Governor and Company 
of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies." 
A century later, when it was united with a rival company 
and reorganized, the name was changed to "The United 
Company of Merchants of England trading to the East 
Indies." In 1608 the Company established its first fac- 
tory or trading station at Surat on the western coast of 
India. Other settlements were made at various times 
during the seventeenth century. In 1639 the site of 
Madras was purchased. In 1668 the Company acquired 
control of the island of Bombay. In 1690 a permanent 
settlement was made on the site of Calcutta. From 
time to time new charters and additional privileges were 
given to the Company until at length it acquired prac- 
tically all the powers of government, including the power 
of punishing its servants by death. Thus the most 
important trading-posts gradually became seats of gov- 
ernment, and as the Company's power over the surround- 
ing country increased, presidents of factories became 
governors of provinces. 

Meanwhile the French, who were to be the chief rivals 
of the English in the struggle for India, had begun to 
take an interest in the commerce of the East. During 
the first part of the seventeenth century various com- 
panies were formed and various attempts were made to 
trade with the East Indies. But it was not until 1664 
that a strong French East India Company was organized. 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

Its first important settlement was made in 1674 at Pon- 
dicherry, about one hundred miles south of Madras. 
Other settlements were made at various times, especially 
at Karikal, south of Pondicherry, at Mahe on the west 
coast, and at Chandernagore near Calcutta. Early in 
the eighteenth century the French began to interfere in 
the affairs of the local rulers, and thereby gained for 
France a high estimation in the minds of the natives. 
The outcome of this policy and the results of the struggle 
with the English which followed are made clear in Ma- 
caulay's narrative. 

Little need be said here of the history of British influ- 
ence in India since Clive's time. The power of the East 
India Company steadily increased. Either by conquest 
or by getting actual control of local governments, without 
taking away the nominal power of the native rulers, it 
gradually made the whole country subject to its authority. 
In 1858, partly as a result of the terrible sepoy mutiny 
of the year before, which threatened to drive the English 
from the country, all powers of government were taken 
from the East India Company and vested in the crown. 
Since that time the country has been managed directly by 
the English government. It is interesting to note that 
this very reform had been advocated by Clive nearly one 
hundred years before. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. Macaulay 

Works, authorized edition, edited by Lady Trevelyan, 

Macaulay's sister. Longmans, Green, and Co. 
Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, by Sir George Otto 
Trevelyan. 2 vols. This book, by Macaulay's nephew, 
is one of the most entertaining biographies in the 
world. It will be found interesting to young readers as 
well as to older ones. Students should be encouraged to 
read at least those parts that deal with Macaulay's 
boyhood, his life at the university, his first great 
oratorical successes, and his life with his younger 
brothers and sisters at home. 
Life of Macaulay (with criticism of his works), by J. 
Cotter Morrison. English Men of Letters series. This 
is the best brief biography. 
Brief biographical and critical articles. 

By Leslie Stephen, in the Dictionary of National 

Biography. 
By Mark Pattison, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. 
Criticism. 

By Walter Bagehot, in Literary Studies, vol. II. 
By John Morley, in Miscellanies, vol. II; printed 

also in Brewster's Studies in Structure and Style. 
By Leslie Stephen, in Hours in a Library, vol. III. 
By E. P. Whipple, in Essays and Reviews. 

II. Clive and India 

Lord Clive, by Col. G. B. Malleson, in Rulers of India 

series. Clarendon Press. 1900. 
Lord Clive, by Col. Sir Charles Wilson. Macmillan. 

1893. 



xxxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Dupleix, by Col. G. B. Malleson, in Rulers of India series. 

Of the multitude of books on India only a few need be 
mentioned here. 

Oxford Student's History of India, by Vincent Smith, 
i vol. Clarendon Press. 1908. This book gives in 
one small volume a good general survey of the whole 
history of India. 

A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, by Sir Wm. W. 
Hunter. 1 vol. Clarendon Press. 1892. An excel- 
lent epitome of Indian history, brief but comprehensive. 

The Indian Empire, its History, Peoples, and Products, 
by Sir Wm. W. Hunter. 1 vol. Trubner and Co. 
1882. This volume gives much information about the 
country and the people. The historical part is very 
much condensed. 

A History of British India, by Sir Wm. W. Hunter. 
2 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1889. This is the 
best history of British India down to the beginning of 
the eighteenth century. Unfortunately it stops with 
the year 1708. 

The Rise of the British Dominion in India, by Sir Alfred 
Lyall. 1 vol. Scribners. 1893. 

The following books are suggested as likely to stimu- 
late the interest of pupils in India: 
Mine Own People, Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers 

Three, and other stories of Indian life, by Rudyard 

Kipling. 
On the Face of the Waters, by Flora Annie Steele. A 

novel dealing with the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. 



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CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CLIVE 

1725. Clive born. 

1727. Accession of George II. 

1 740-1 748. War of the Austrian Succession. 

1 741. Dupleix becomes governor of Pondicherry. 

1743. Clive sets sail for India to become a writer at Madras. 

1744. Clive arrives at Madras. 

1746. Madras captured by the French. Clive flees to Fort 

St. David. 
1748. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. 
1 750-1 754. Local war in the Carnatic. 
1 75 1. Clive captures and defends Arcot. 

1753. Clive marries Miss Maskelyne, and sails for England. 

1754. Clive elected to Parliament for St. Michael, but unseated. 

1754. Dupleix recalled. 

1755. Clive made lieutenant-colonel and appointed governor of 
Fort St. David. Sails for India. 

1756. Clive and Admiral Watson capture Gheriah. The Black 
Hole of Calcutta. English expedition under Clive and 
Watson sets sail for Bengal. 

1756-1763. The Seven Years War. 

1757. Clive and Watson retake Calcutta and capture the French 
fort at Chandernagore. Clive defeats Surajah Dowlah at 
Plassey. 

1758. Clive made governor of Bengal. Colonel Forde drives the 
French out of the Northern Circars. 

1759. Expedition of the Dutch to Bengal defeated. 

1760. Accession of George III. The French defeated at Wan- 
dewash. Clive returns to England. Becomes Baron Clive 
of Plassey. 

1 761. Elected to Parliament. 

1 763-1 764. Struggle for control of the Board of Directors. 
1764. Clive appointed governor and commander-in-chief in 
Bengal. 

xliv 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xlv 

1 765-1 767. Clive's last period in India. Reforms in the adminis- 
tration of Bengal. 

1767. Clive returns to England. 

1 772-1 7 73. Parliamentary investigation of Clive's conduct in 
India. 

1774. Death of Clive. 



ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE 



LORD CLIVE 

(January, 1840.) 

The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family 
Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By Major- 
General Sir John Malcolm, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. 
London: 1836. 

We have always thought it strange that, while the history 
of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all 
the nations of Europe, the great actions of our country- 
men in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little 
interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Mon- 5 
tezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt 
whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of 
highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of 
Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether 
Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether 10 
Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories 
of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, 
who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not 
broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better 
weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, 15 
flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a 
monster, half man and half beast, who took a harque- 
busier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and 
lightning of the skies. The people of India, when we sub- 
dued them, were ten times as numerous as the Americans 20 
whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were at the same 
time quite as highly civilised as the victorious Spaniards. 
They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or 

3 



4 LORD CLIVE 

Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the 
cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer 
than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys 
whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the 
5 Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery 
which would have astonished the Great Captain. It 
might have been expected, that every Englishman who 
takes any interest in any part of history would be curious 
to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated 

10 from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the 
course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the 
world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most 
readers, not only insipid but positively distasteful. 

Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. 

15 Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare 
merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to 
attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior 
to no English historian in style and power of painting, 
is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, 

20 on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events 
of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his 
narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of 
the most finely written in our language, has never been 
very popular, and is now scarcely ever read. 

25 We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract 
those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The 
materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by 
the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we 
cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up. 

30 It would, however, be unjust to criticize with severity a 
work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise 
it, would probably have been improved by condensation 
and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to 



LORD CLIVE 5 

perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to 
the noble family to which the public owes so much useful 
and curious information. 

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest 
allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished 5 
and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the 
whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive. We 
are far indeed from sympathizing with Sir John Malcolm, 
whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see 
nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol. 10 
But we are at least equally far from concurring in the 
severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show 
less discrimination in his account of Clive than in any 
other part of his valuable work. Clive, like most men 
who are born with strong passions and tried by strong 15 
temptations, committed great faults. But every person 
who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career 
must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and states- 
men, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great 
either in arms or in council. 20 

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth cen- 
tury, on an es*~te of no great value, near Market-D ray- 
ton, in Shrops h re. In the reign of George the First, this 
moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. 
Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no 25 
great tact or capacity. He had been bred to the law, and 
divided his time between professional business and the 
avocations of a small proprietor. He married a lady 
from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, and became 
the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, 30 
Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was 
born at the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth 
of September, 1725. 



6 LORD CLIVE 

Some lineaments of the character of the man were early 
discerned in the child. There remain letters written by 
his relations when he was in his seventh year; and from 
these letters it appears that, even at that early age, his 
5 strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a consti- 
tutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly com- 
patible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great 
uneasiness to his family. "Fighting," says one of his 
uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives 

iohis temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he 
flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people of 
the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from 
their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the 
lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and with what terror 

15 the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near 
the summit. They also relate how he formed all the idle 
lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and com- 
pelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples 
and half -pence, in consideration of which he guaranteed 

20 the security of their windows. He was sent from school 
to school, making very little progress in his learning, and 
gaining for himself every where the chiinixter of an ex- 
ceedingly naughty boy. One of his makers, it is said, 
was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would 

25 make a great figure in the world. But the. general opinion 
seems to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if not 
a reprobate. His family expected nothing good from 
such slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is 
not strange, therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, 

30 when he was in his eighteenth year, a writership in the 
service of the East India Company, and shipped him off 
to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras. 

Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of 



LORD CLIVE 7 

the youths whom the East India College now annually 
sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic empire. The Com- 
pany was then purely a trading corporation. Its territory 
consisted of a few square miles, for which rent was paid 
to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely nu- 5 
merous enough to man the batteries of three or four ill-con- 
structed forts, which had been erected for the protection 
of the warehouses. The natives, who composed a con- 
siderable part of these little garrisons, had not yet been 
trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some 10 
with swords and shields, some with bows and arrows. The 
business of the servant of the Company was not, as now, 
to conduct the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business 
of a great country, but to take stock, to make advances to 
weavers, to ship cargoes, and above all to keep an eye on 15 
private traders who dared to infringe the monopoly. The 
younger clerks were so miserably paid that they could 
scarcely subsist without incurring debt; the elder enriched 
themselves by trading on their own account; and those 
who lived to rise to the top of the service often accumu- 20 
lated considerable fortunes. 

Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at 
this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Com- 
pany's settlements. In the preceding century, Fort St. 
George had arisen on a barren spot beaten by a raging 25 
surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by many 
thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns spring up 
in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd. 
There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each 
surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of 30 
the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and 
the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which springs 
up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these 



8 LORD CLIVE 

mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, 
luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of the high judicial 
and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But 
comfort was far less understood. Many devices which 
5 now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, 
and prolong life, were unknown. There was far less inter- 
course with Europe than at present. The voyage by the 
Cape, which in our time has often been performed within 
three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, 

10 and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Con- 
sequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more es- 
tranged from his country, much more addicted to Oriental 
usages, and much less fitted to mix in society after his 
return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present 

15 day. 

Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, 
by permission of the native government, an extensive 
authority, such as every great Indian landowner exercised 
within his own domain. But they had never dreamed 

20 of claiming independent power. The surrounding coun- 
try was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy 
of the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly called the Nizam, 
who was himself only a deputy of the mighty prince 
designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those 

25 names, once so august and formidable, still remain. There 
is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension 
allowed to him by the English out of the revenues of the 
province which his ancestors ruled. There is still a 
Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British canton- 

30 ment, and to whom a British resident gives, under the 
name of advice, commands which are not to be dis- 
puted. There is still a Mogul, who is permitted to play 
at holding courts and receiving petitions, but who has 



LORD CLIVE 9 

less power to help or hurt than the youngest civil servant 
of the Company. 

Give's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. 
The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the 
young adventurer picked up some knowledge of Portu- 5 
guese and spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive 
in India till more than a year after he had left England. 
His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were 
exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. 
He was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate 10 
which can be made tolerable to an European only by spa- 
cious and well-placed apartments. He had been furnished 
with letters of recommendation to a gentleman who might 
have assisted him; but when he landed at Fort St. George 
he found that this gentleman had sailed for England. The 15 
lad's shy and haughty disposition withheld him from in- 
troducing himself to strangers. He was several months 
in India before he became acquainted with a single family. 
The climate affected his health and spirits. His duties 
were of a kind ill suited to his ardent and daring character. 20 
He pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations 
expressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive 
than- we should have expected either from the waywardness 
of his boyhood, or from the inflexible sternness of his later 
years. "I have not enjoyed," says he, "one happy day 25 
since I left my native country;" and again, "I must con- 
fess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native Eng- 
land, it affects me in a very particular manner .... If 
I should be so far blest as to revisit again my own country, 
but more especially Manchester, the centre of all my 30 
wishes, all that I could hope or desire for would be pre- 
sented before me in one view." 

One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The 



io LORD CLIVE 

Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive 
to have access to it. The young man devoted much of 
his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time almost 
all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed. As a 
5 boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became too 
busy, for literary pursuits. 

But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the 
sorrows of a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate 
audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors 

io as he had behaved to his schoolmasters, and was several 
times in danger of losing his situation. Twice, while 
residing in the Writers' Buildings, he attempted to destroy 
himself ; and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own 
head failed to go off. This circumstance, it is said, 

15 affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein. 
After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well 
loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation that surely he 
was reserved for something great. 

About this time an event which at first seemed likely 

20 to destroy all his hopes in life suddenly opened before 
him a new path to eminence. Europe had been, during 
some years, distracted by the war of the Austrian succes- 
sion. George the Second was the steady ally of Maria 
Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the opposite side. 

25 Though England was even then the first of maritime 
powers, she was not, as she has since become, more than 
a match on the sea for all the nations of the world to- 
gether; and she found it difficult to maintain a contest 
against the united navies of France and Spain. In the 

30 eastern seas France obtained the ascendency. Labour- 
donnais, governor of Mauritius, a man of eminent talents 
and virtues, conducted an expedition to the continent of 
India in spite of the opposition of the British fleet, landed, 



LORD CLIVE ii 

assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and com- 
pelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were 
delivered up; the French colours were displayed on Eort 
St. George; and the contents of the Company's warehouses 
were seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was 5 
stipulated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants 
should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town 
should remain in the hands of the French till it should be 
ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that only 
a moderate ransom should be required. 10 

But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the 
jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondi- 
cherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to revolve 
gigantic schemes, with which the restoration of Madras to 
the English was by no means compatible. He declared 15 
that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that 
conquests made by the French arms on the continent of 
India were at the disposal of the governor of Pondicherry 
alone; and that Madras should be rased to the ground. 
Labourdonnais was compelled to yield. The anger which 20 
the breach of the capitulation excited among the English 
was increased by the ungenerous manner in which Dupleix 
treated the principal servants of the Company. The 
Governor and several of the first gentlemen of Fort St. 
George were carried under a guard to Pondicherry, and 25 
conducted through the town in a triumphal procession 
under the eyes of fifty thousand spectators. It was with 
reason thought that this gross violation of public faith 
absolved the inhabitants of Madras from the engagements 
into which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive 30 
fled from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussul- 
man, and took refuge at Fort St. David, one of the small 
English settlements subordinate to Madras. 



12 LORD CLIVE 

The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally 
led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless 
and intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages 
and casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an 
5 ensign's commission in the service of the Company, and 
at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal 
courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal 
proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was 
the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicu- 

10 ous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began 
to show in his new calling other qualities which had not 
before been discerned in him, judgment, sagacity, deference 
to legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly 
in several operations against the French, and was par- 

15 ticularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then con- 
sidered as the ablest British officer in India. 

Give had been only a few months in the army when 
intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded 
between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in conse- 

20 quence compelled to restore Madras to the English Com- 
pany; and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his 
former business. He did indeed return for a short time 
to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major 
Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and 

25 then again returned to it. While he was thus wavering 
between a military and a commercial life, events took 
place which decided his choice. The politics of India 
assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the 
English and French Crowns; but there arose between 

30 the English and French Companies trading to the East 
a war most eventful and important, a war in which the 
prize was nothing less than the magnificent inheritance 
of the house of Tamerlane. 



LORD CLIVE 13 

The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the 
sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive and 
splendid in the world. In no European kingdom was so 
large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a 
revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and mag- 5 
nificence of the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hin- 
dostan, amazed even travellers who had seen St. Peter's. 
The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations which 
surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled even eyes which 
were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the 10 
great viceroys who held their posts by virtue of commis- 
sions from the Mogul ruled as many subjects as the King 
of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the depu- 
ties of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of 
territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of 15 
Tuscany, or the Elector of Saxony. 

There can be little doubt that this great empire, power- 
ful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was 
yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the 
worst governed parts of Europe now are. The adminis- 20 
tration was tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism 
and with all the vices inseparable from the domination of 
race over race. The conflicting pretensions of the princes 
of the royal house produced a long series of crimes and 
public disasters. Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign 25 
sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hin- 
doos, impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld 
tribute, repelled the armies of the government from the 
mountain fastnesses, and poured down in arms on the cul- 
tivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant mal- 30 
administration, in spite of occasional convulsions which 
shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, 
on the whole, retained, during some generations, an out- 



14 LORD CLIVE 

ward appearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But 
throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, 
notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy of the 
prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After 
5 his death, which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was 
fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without co-operated 
with an incurable decay which was fast proceeding within; 
and in a few years the empire had undergone utter de- 
composition. 

10 The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no 
small analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe. 
But perhaps the fall of the Carlo vingians furnishes the 
nearest parallel to the fall of the Moguls. Charlemagne 
was scarcely interred when the imbecility and the disputes 

15 of his descendants began to bring contempt on themselves 
and destruction on their subjects. The wide dominion 
of the Franks was severed into a thousand pieces. Nothing 
more than a nominal dignity was left to the abject heirs 
of an illustrious name, Charles the Bald, and Charles the 

20 Fat, and Charles the Simple. Fierce invaders, differing 
from each other in race, language, and religion, flocked, 
as it by concert, from the farthest corners of the earth, 
to plunder provinces which the government could no 
longer defend. The pirates of the Northern Sea extended 

25 their ravages from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and at length 
fixed their seat in the rich valley of the Seine. The Hun- 
garian, in whom the trembling monks fancied that they 
recognised the Gog or Magog of prophecy, carried back 
the plunder of the cities of Lombardy to the depths of 

30 the Pannonian forests. The Saracen ruled in Sicily, 
desolated the fertile plains of Campania, and spread 
terror even to the walls of Rome. In the midst of these 
sufferings, a great internal change passed upon the empire. 



LORD CLIVE 15 

The corruption of death began to ferment into new forms 
of life. While the great body, as a whole, was torpid and 
passive, every separate member began to feel with a sense, 
and to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the 
most barren and dreary tract of European history, all 5 
feudal privileges, all modern nobility, take their source. 
It is to this point that we trace the power of those princes, 
who, nominally vassals, but really independent, long gov- 
erned, with the titles of dukes, marquesses and counts, 
almost every part of the dominions which had obeyed 10 
Charlemagne. 

Such or nearly such was the change which passed on 
the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed 
the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sover- 
eigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away 15 
life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concu- 
bines, and listening to buffoons. A succession of ferocious 
invaders descended through the western passes, to prey 
on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian con- 
queror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of 20 
Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which 
the magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier, the 
Peacock Throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda 
had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, 
and the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after 25 
many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in the bracelet of 
Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the hideous 
idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon followed to complete 
the work of devastation which the Persian had begun. 
The warlike tribes of Rajpootana threw off the Mussul- 30 
man yoke. A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohil- 
cund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread 
dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border 



1 6 LORD CLIVE 

on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet more 
formidable race, a race which was long the terror of every 
native power, and which, after many desperate and doubt- 
ful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of 
5 England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that 
this wild clan of plunderers first descended from their 
mountains; and soon after his death, every corner of his 
wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of 
the Mahrattas. Many fertile vice-royalties were entirely 

10 subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across 
the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned 
at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in 
Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great 
sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still 

15 retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every 
region which was not subject to their rule was wasted 
by their incursions. Wherever their kettle-drums were 
heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, 
hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife 

20 and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder 
neighbourhood of the hyaena and the tiger. Many prov- 
inces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an 
annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still 
bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious 

25 black-mail. The camp-fires of one rapacious leader were 
seen from the walls of the palace of Delhi. Another, at 
the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after 
year on the rice fields of Bengal. Even the European 
factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hun- 

30 dred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Cal- 
cutta against the horsemen of Berar; and the name of 
the Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the 
danger. 



LORD CLIVE 17 

Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority 
they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge 
in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane; as a 
Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy might have 
acknowledged the superiority of the most helpless driveller 5 
among the later Carlovingians. They might occasionally 
send to their titular sovereign a complimentary present, 
or solicit from him a title of honour. In truth, however, 
they were no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure, 
but independent hereditary princes. In this way orig- 10 
inated those great Mussulman houses which formerly ruled 
Bengal and the Carnatic, and those which still, though in 
a state of vassalage, exercise some of the powers of royalty 
at Lucknow and Hyderabad. 

In what was this confusion to end? Was the strife to 15 
continue during centuries? Was it to terminate in the rise 
of another great monarchy? Was the Mussulman or the 
Mahratta to be the Lord of India? Was another Baber 
to descend from the mountains, and to lead the hardy 
tribes of Cabul and Chorasan against a wealthier and less 20 
warlike race? None of these events seemed improbable. 
But scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have 
thought it possible that a trading company, separated from 
India by fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in 
India only a few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in 25 
less than a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape 
Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas; would 
compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their mutual 
feuds in common subjection; would tame down even those 
wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the 30 
Moguls; and, having united under its laws a hundred mil- 
lions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms far to 
the east of the Burrampooter, and far to the west of the 
3 



18 LORD CLIVE 

Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of Ava, and 
seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar. 

The man who first saw that it was possible to found an 
European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy 
5 was Dupleix. His restless, capacious, and inventive mind 
had formed this scheme, at a time when the ablest servants 
of the English Company were busied only about invoices 
and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed to himself 
the end. He had also a just and distinct view of the means 

10 by which it was to be attained. He clearly saw that the 
greatest force which the princes of India could bring 
into the field would be no match for a small body of men 
trained in the discipline, and guided by the tactics, of the 
West. He saw also that the natives of India might, under 

15 European commanders, be formed into armies, such as 
Saxe or Frederic would be proud to command. He was 
perfectly aware that the most easy and convenient way 
in which an European adventurer could exercise sover- 
eignty in India, was to govern the motions, and to speak 

20 through the mouth of some glittering puppet dignified 
by the title of Nabob or Nizam. The arts both of war 
and policy, which a few years later were employed with 
such signal success by the English, were first understood 
and practised by this ingenious and aspiring Frenchman. 

25 The situation of India was such that scarcely any 
aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws 
or in recent practice. All rights were in a state of utter 
uncertainty; and the Europeans who took part in the 
disputes of the natives confounded the confusion, by apply- 

30 ing to Asiatic politics the public law of the West and analo- 
gies drawn from the feudal system. If it was convenient 
to treat a Nabob as an independent prince, there was an 
excellent plea for doing so. He was independent in fact. 



LORD CLIVE 19 

If it was convenient to treat him as a mere deputy of the 
Court of Delhi, there was no difficulty; for he was so in 
theory. If it was convenient to consider his office as an 
hereditary dignity, or as a dignity held during life only, or as 
a dignity held, only during the good pleasure of the Mogul, 5 
arguments and precedents might be found for every one of 
those views. The party who had the heir of Baber in their 
hands represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, 
the absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities 
were bound to obey. The party against whom his name 10 
was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining 
that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that, though it 
might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a 
venerable relic of an order of things which had passed 
away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of 15 
Hindostan. 

In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of the 
new masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of 
the Deccan. His authority descended to his son, Nazir 
Jung. Of the provinces subject to this high functionary, 20 
the Carnatic was the wealthiest and the most extensive. 
It was governed by an ancient Nabob, whose name the 
English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan. 

But there were pretenders to the government both of 
the viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirza- 25 
pha Jung, a grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the 
competitor of Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of 
a former Nabob of the Carnatic, disputed the title of 
Anaverdy Khan. In the unsettled state of Indian law, 
it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib to 30 
make out something like a claim of right. In a society 
altogether disorganised, they had no difficulty in finding 
greedy adventurers to follow their standards. They 



20 LORD CLIVE 

united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied 
for assistance to the French, whose fame had been raised 
by their success against the English in the recent war 
on the coast of Coromandel. 
5 Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the 
subtle and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of the 
Carnatic, to make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under 
their names the whole of southern India; this was indeed 
an attractive prospect. He allied himself with the pre- 

10 tenders, and sent four hundred French soldiers, and 
two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the European 
fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. A battle 
was fought. The French distinguished themselves greatly. 
Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son Ma- 

1 5 hommed AH, who was afterwards well known in England 
as the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the eloquence 
of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled with a 
scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly; and the 
conquerors became at once masters of almost every part 

20 of the Carnatic. 

This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix. 
After some months of fighting, negotiation, and intrigue, 
his ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed 
every where. Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his 

25 own followers; Mirzapha Jung was master of the Deccan; 
and the triumph of French arms and French policy was 
complete. At Pondicherry all was exultation and festivity. 
Salutes were fired from the batteries, and Te Deutn sung 
in the churches. The new Nizam came thither to visit 

30 his allies; and the ceremony of his -installation was per- 
formed there with great pomp. Dupleix, dressed in the 
garb worn by Mahommedans of the highest rank, entered 
the town in the same palanquin with the Nizam, and, in 



LORD CLIVE 21 

the pageant which followed, took precedence of all the 
court. He was declared Governor of India from the river 
Kristna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as 
France, with authority superior even to that of Chunda 
Sahib. He was intrusted with the command of seven 5 
thousand cavalry. It was announced that no mint would 
be suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at Pondi- 
cherry. A large portion of the treasures which former 
Viceroys of the Deccan had accumulated found its way 
into the coffers of the French governor. It was rumoured 10 
that he had received two hundred thousand pounds ster- 
ling in money, besides many valuable jewels. In fact, 
there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. He now 
ruled thirty millions of people with almost absolute power. 
No honour or emolument could be obtained from the 15 
government but by his intervention. No petition, unless 
signed by him, was perused by the Nizam. 

Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months. 
But another prince of the same house was raised to the 
throne by French influence, and ratified all the promises 20 
of his predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest po- 
tentate in India. His countrymen boasted that his 
name was mentioned with awe even in the chambers of 
the palace of Delhi. The native population looked with 
amazement on the progress which, in the short space of 25 
four years, an European adventurer had made towards 
dominion in Asia. Nor was the vain-glorious French- 
man content with the reality of power. He loved to dis- 
play his greatness with arrogant ostentation before the 
eyes of his subjects and of his rivals. Near the spot where 30 
his policy had obtained its chief triumph, by the fall of 
Nazir Jung and the elevation of Mirzapha, he determined 
to erect a column, on the four sides of which four pompous 



22 LORD CLIVE 

inscriptions, in four languages, should proclaim his glory 
to all the nations of the East. Medals stamped with 
emblems of his successes were buried beneath the founda- 
tions of this stately pillar, and round it arose a town bear- 
5 ing the haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, 
being interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix. 

The English had made some feeble and irresolute 
attemps to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the rival 
Company, and continued to recognise Mahommed Ali 

10 as Nabob of the Carnatic. But the dominions of 
Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone; and 
Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and his 
French auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed impossible. 
The small force which was then at Madras had no com- 

15 mander. Major Lawrence had returned to England: 
and not a single officer of established character remained 
in the settlement. The natives had learned to look with 
contempt on the mighty nation which was soon to conquer 
and to rule them. They had seen the French colours 

20 flying on Fort St. George; they had seen the chiefs of the 
English factory led in triumph through the streets of 
Pondicherry; they had seen the arms and counsels of 
Dupleix every where successful, while the opposition 
which the authorities of Madras had made to his progress, 

25 had served only to expose their own weakness, and to 
heighten his glory. At this moment, the valour and 
genius of an obscure English youth suddenly turned the 
tide of fortune. 

Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesi- 

30 tating for some time between a military and a com- 
mercial life, he had at length been placed in a post which 
partook of both characters, that of commissary to the 
troops, with the rank of captain. The present emergency 



LORD CLIVE 23 

called forth all his powers. He represented to his superiors 
that, unless some vigorous effort were made, Trichinopoly 
would fall, the House of Anaverdy Khan would perish, and 
the French would become the real masters of the whole 
peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary to strike 5 
some daring blow. If an attack were made on Arcot, the 
capital of the Carnatic, and the favourite residence of the 
Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichino- 
poly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, 
now thoroughly alarmed by the success of Dupleix, and 10 
apprehensive that, in the event of a new war between 
France and Great Britain, Madras would be instantly 
taken and destroyed, approved of Clive's plan, and in- 
trusted the execution of it to himself. The young cap- 
tain was put at the head of two hundred English soldiers, 15 
and three hundred sepoys armed and disciplined after the 
European fashion. Of the eight officers who commanded 
this little force under him, only two had ever been in 
action, and four of the eight were factors of the Company, 
whom Clive's example had induced to offer their services. 2.0 
The weather was stormy; but Clive pushed on, through 
thunder, lightning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The 
garrison, in a panic, evacuated the fort, and the English 
entered it without a blow. 

But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to 25 
retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He in- 
stantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works, 
and to make preparations for sustaining a siege. The 
garrison, which had fled at his approach, had now re- 
covered from its dismay, and, having been swollen by large 30 
reinforcements from the neighbourhood to a force of three 
thousand men, encamped close to the town. At dead of 
night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked the camp 



24 LORD CLIVE 

by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the rest, and 
returned to his quarters without having lost a single 
man. 

The intelligence of these events was soon carried to 
5 Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was besieg- 
ing Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four thou- 
sand men from his camp, and sent them to Arcot. They 
were speedily joined by the remains of the force which 
Clive had lately scattered. They were further strength- 

io ened by two thousand men from Vellore, and by a still 
more important reinforcement of a hundred and fifty 
French soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from Pondi- 
cherry. The whole of this army, amounting to about 
ten thousand men, was under the command of Rajah 

15 Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib. 

Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, 
which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The 
walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts too 
narrow to admit the guns, the battlements too low to 

20 protect the soldiers. The little garrison had been greatly 
reduced by casualties. It now consisted of a hundred 
and twenty Europeans and two hundred sepoys. Only 
four officers were left; the stock of provisions was scanty; 
and the commander, who had to conduct the defence 

25 under circumstances so discouraging, was a young man 
of five and twenty, who had been bred a book-keeper. 

During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days 
the young captain maintained the defence, with a firmness, 
vigilance, and ability, which would have done honour to 

30 the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach, however, 
increased day by day. The garrison began to feel the 
pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances, any 
troops so scantily provided with officers might have been 



LORD CLIVE 25 

expected to show signs of insubordination; and the danger 
was peculiarly great in a force composed of men differing 
■widely from each other in extraction, colour, language, 
manners, and religion. But the devotion of the little 
band to its chief surpassed any thing that is related of the 5 
Tenth Legion of Caesar, or of the Old Guard of Napoleon. 
The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty 
fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to 
the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the 
natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was 10 
strained away from the rice, would suffice for themselves. 
History contains no more touching instance of military 
fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind. 

An attempt made by the government of Madras to 
relieve the place had failed. But there was hope from 15 
another quarter. A body of six thousand Mahrattas, half 
soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a chief named 
Morari Row, had been hired to assist Mahommed Ali; but 
thinking the French power irresistible, and the triumph 
of Chunda Sahib certain, they had hitherto remained in- 20 
active on the frontiers of the Carnatic. The fame of the 
defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor. Morari 
Row declared that he had never before believed that Eng- 
lishmen could fight, but that he would willingly help them 
since he saw that they had spirit to help themselves. 25 
Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion. 
It was necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried 
negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, which were 
rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his proposals were 
not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put 30 
every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in reply, 
with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an 
usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do 



26 LORD CLIVE 

well to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a 
breach defended by English soldiers. 

Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was 
well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great 
5 Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the memory of 
Hosein the son of Ali. The history of Islam contains 
nothing more touching than the event which gave rise 
to that solemnity. The mournful legend relates how the 
chief of the Fatimites, when all his brave followers had 

10 perished round him, drank his latest draught of water, 
and uttered his latest prayer, how the assassins carried 
his head in triumph, how the tyrant smote the lifeless 
lips with his staff, and how a few old men recollected with 
tears that they had seen those lips pressed to the lips of 

15 the Prophet of God. After the lapse of near twelve 
centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the 
fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms of the devout 
Moslem of India. They work themselves up to such ago- 
nies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have 

20 given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excite- 
ment. They believe that whoever, during this festival, falls 
in arms against the infidels, atones by his death for all the 
sins of his life, and passes at once to the garden of the 
Houris. It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined 

25 to assault Arcot. Stimulating drugs were employed to aid 

the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with 

enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the attack. 

Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, 

had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, 

30 had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by 
the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy 
advanced driving before them elephants whose foreheads 
were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the 



LORD CLIVE 27 

gates would yield to the shock of these living battering- 
rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English 
musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously 
away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them 
forward. A raft was launched on the water which rilled 5 
one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners 
at that post did not understand their business, took the 
management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared 
the raft in a few minutes. Where the moat was dry, the 
assailants mounted with great boldness; but they were 10 
received with a fire so heavy and so well-directed, that it 
soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intox- 
ication. The rear ranks of the English kept the front 
ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded mus- 
kets, and every shot told on the living mass below. After 15 
three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the 
ditch. 

The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the 
assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. 
The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal 20 
of the attack. But when day broke, the enemy were no 
more to be seen. They had retired, leaving to the Eng- 
lish several guns and a large quantity of ammunition. 

The news was received at Fort St. George with tran- 
sports of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded as 25 
a man equal to any command. Two hundred English 
soldiers, and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him, and 
with this force he instantly commenced offensive opera- 
tions. He took the fort of Timery, effected a junction 
with a division of Morari Row's army, and hastened, by 30 
forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib, who was at the 
head of about five thousand men, of whom three hundred 
were French. The action was sharp, but Clive gained a 



28 LORD CLIVE 

complete victory. The military chest of Rajah Sahib fell 
into the hands of the conquerors. Six hundred sepoys, 
who had served in the enemy's army, came over to Clive's 
quarters, and were taken into the British service. Con- 
5 jeveram surrendered without a blow. The governor of 
Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title of 
Mahommed Ali. 

Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to 
Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy 

10 close. But the timidity and incapacity which appeared 
in all the movements of the English, except where he was 
personally present, protracted the struggle. The Mah- 
rattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different race 
from the British whom they found elsewhere. The effect 

15 of this languor was, that in no long time Rajah Sahib, at 
the head of a considerable army, in which were four hun- 
dred French troops, appeared almost under the guns of 
Fort St. George and laid waste the villas and gardens of 
the gentlemen of the English settlement. But he was 

20 again encountered and defeated by Clive. More than a 
hundred of the French were killed or taken, a loss more 
serious than that of thousands of natives. The victorious 
army marched from the field of battle to Fort St. David. 
On the road lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and 

25 the stately monument which was designed to commemo- 
rate the triumphs of France in the East. Clive ordered 
both the city and the monument to be rased to the ground. 
He was induced, we beiieve, to take this step, not by 
personal or national malevolence, but by a just and pro- 

30 found policy. The town and its pompous name, the pillar 
and its vaunting inscriptions, were among the devices by 
which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India under a 
spell. This spell it was Clive's business to break. The 



LORD CLIVE 29 

natives had been taught that France was confessedly the 
first power in Europe, and that the English did not presume 
to dispute her supremacy. No measure could be more 
effectual for the removing of this delusion than the public 
and solemn demolition of the French trophies. 5 

The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, 
determined to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to 
reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly. But just at this 
conjuncture, Major Lawrence arrived from England, and 
assumed the chief command. From the waywardness 10 
and impatience of control which had characterised Clive, 
both at school and in the counting-house, it might have 
been expected that he would not, after such achievements, 
act with zeal and good humour in a subordinate capacity. 
But Lawrence had early treated him with kindness; and it 15 
is bare justice to Clive to say that, proud and overbearing 
as he was, kindness was never thrown away upon him. 
He cheerfully placed himself under the orders of his old 
friend, and exerted himself as strenuously in the second 
post as he could have done in the first. Lawrence well 20 
knew the value of such assistance. Though himself gifted 
with no intellectual faculty higher than plain good sense, 
he fully appreciated the powers of his brilliant coadjutor. 
Though he had made a methodical study of military tactics, 
and, like all men regularly bred to a profession, was dis- 25 
posed to look with disdain on interlopers, he had yet 
liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an excep- 
tion to common rules. "Some people," he wrote, "are 
pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky; but, 
in my opinion, from the knowledge I have of the gentle- 30 
man, he deserved and might expect from his conduct every 
thing as it fell out ; — a man of an undaunted resolution, 
of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind which never 



30 LORD CLIVE 

left him in the greatest danger — born a soldier; for, 
without a military education of any sort, or much con- 
versing with any of the profession, from his judgment 
and good sense, he led on an army like an experienced 
5 officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence that certainly 
warranted success." 

The French had no commander to oppose to the two 
friends. Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation 
and intrigue to any European who has borne a part in 

10 the revolutions of India, was ill qualified to direct in 
person military operations. He had not been bred a 
soldier, and had no inclination to become one. His 
enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he de- 
fended himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil. 

15 He kept away from shot, he said, because silence and 
tranquillity were propitious to his genius, and he found 
it difficult to pursue his meditations amidst the noise of 
fire-arms. He was thus under the necessity of intrusting 
to others the execution of his great warlike designs; and 

20 he bitterly complained that he was ill served. He had 
indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent merit, the 
celebrated Bussy. But Bussy had marched northward 
with the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking after 
his own interests, and those of France, at the court of 

25 that prince. Among the officers who remained with 
Dupleix, there was not a single man of capacity; and 
many of them were boys, at whose ignorance and folly 
the common soldiers laughed. 

The English triumphed every where. The besiegers 

30 of Trichinopoly were themselves besieged and compelled 
to capitulate. Chunda Sahib fell into the hands of the 
Mahrattas, and was put to death, at the instigation 
probably of his competitor, Mahommed Ali. The spirit 



LORD CLIVE 31 

of Dupleix, however, was unconquerable, and his resources 
inexhaustible. From his employers in Europe he no 
longer received help or countenance. They condemned 
his policy. They gave him no pecuniary assistance. 
They sent him for troops only the sweepings of the galleys. 5 
Yet still he persisted, intrigued, bribed, promised, lavished 
his private fortune, strained his credit, procured new di- 
plomas from Delhi, raised up new enemies to the govern- 
ment of Madras on every side, and found tools even among 
the allies of the English Company. But all was in vain. 10 
Slowly, but steadily, the power of Britain continued to 
increase, and that of France to decline. 

The health of Clive had never been good during his 
residence in India; and his constitution was now so much 
impaired that he determined to return to England. Before 15 
his departure he undertook a service of considerable diffi- 
culty, and performed it with his usual vigour and dexterity. 
The forts of Covelong and Chingleput were occupied by 
French garrisons. It was determined to send a force 
against them. But the only force available for this pur- 20 
pose was of such a description that no officer but Clive 
would risk his reputation by commanding it. It consisted 
of five hundred newly-levied sepoys, and two hundred 
recruits who had just landed from England, and who 
were the worst and lowest wretches that the Company's 25 
crimps could pick up in the flash-houses of London. Clive, 
ill and exhausted as he was, undertook to make an army of 
this undisciplined rabble, and marched with them to 
Covelong. A shot from the fort killed one of these 
extraordinary soldiers ; on which all the rest faced about 30 
and ran away, and it was with the greatest difficulty that 
Clive rallied them. On another occasion, the noise of a 
gun terrified the sentinels so much that one of them was 



32 LORD CLIVE 

found, some hours later, at the bottom of a well. Clive 
gradually accustomed them to danger, and, by exposing 
himself constantly in the most perilous situations, shamed 
them into courage. He at length succeeded in forming 
5 a respectable force out of his unpromising materials. Cove- 
long fell. Clive learned that a strong detachment was 
marching to relieve it from Chingleput. He took meas- 
ures to prevent the enemy from learning that they were 
too late, laid an ambuscade for them on the road, killed a 

10 hundred of them with one fire, took three hundred pris- 
oners, pursued the fugitives to the gates of Chingleput, 
laid siege instantly to that fastness, reputed one of the 
strongest in India, made a breach, and was on the point 
of storming when the French commandant capitulated 

15 and retired with his men. 

Clive returned to Madras victorious, but in a state of 
health which rendered it impossible for him to remain 
there long. He married at this time a young lady of the 
name of Maskelyne, sister of the eminent mathematician, 

20 who long held the post of Astronomer Royal. She is 
described as handsome and accomplished; and her hus- 
band's letters, it is said, contain proofs that he was 
devotedly attached to her. 

^r Almost immediately after the marriage, Clive embarked 

25 with his bride for England. He returned a very different 
person from the poor slighted boy who had been sent out 
ten years before to seek his fortune. He was only twenty- 
seven ; yet his country already respected him as one of her 
first soldiers. There was then general peace in Europe. 

30 The Carnatic was the only part of the world where the 
English and French were in arms against each other. The 
vast schemes of Dupleix had excited no small uneasiness 
in the city of London; and the rapid turn of fortune, which 



LORD CLIVE 33 

was chiefly owing to the courage and talents of dive, had 
been hailed with great delight. The young captain was 
known at the India House by the honourable nickname of 
General Clive, and was toasted by that appellation at the 
feasts of the Directors. On his arrival in England, he 5 
found himself an object of general interest and admiration. 
The East India Company thanked him for his services in 
the warmest terms, and bestowed on him a sword set with 
diamonds. With rare delicacy, he refused to receive this 
token of gratitude unless a similar compliment were paid 10 
to his friend and commander, Lawrence. 

It may easily be supposed that Clive was most cordially 
welcomed home by his family, who were delighted by his 
success, though they seem to have been hardly able to com- 
prehend how their naughty idle Bobby had become so great 15 
a man. His father had been singularly hard of belief. 
Not until the news of the defence of Arcot arrived in Eng- 
land was the old gentleman heard to growl out that, after 
all, the booby had something in him. His expressions of 
approbation became stronger and stronger as news arrived 20 
of one brilliant exploit after another; and he was at length 
immoderately fond and proud of his son. 

Clive's relations had very substantial reasons for rejoicing 
at his return. Considerable sums of prize-money had fallen 
to his share; and he had brought home a moderate fortune, 25 
part of which he expended in extricating his father from 
pecuniary difficulties, and in redeeming the family estate. 
The remainder he appears to have dissipated in the course 
of about two years. He lived splendidly, dressed gaily 
even for those times, kept a carriage and saddle horses, and, 30 
not content with these ways of getting rid of his money, 
resorted to the most speedy and effectual of all modes of 
evacuation, a contested election followed by a petition. 
4 



34 LORD CLIVE 

At the time of the general election of 1754, the govern- 
ment was in a very singular state. There was scarcely 
any formal opposition. The Jacobites had been cowed 
by the issue of the last rebellion. The Tory party had 
5 fallen into utter contempt. It had been deserted by all 
the men of talents who had belonged to it, and had scarcely 
given a symptom of life during some years. The small 
faction which had been held together by the influence 
and promises of Prince Frederic, had been dispersed by 

10 his death. Almost every public man of distinguished 
talents in the kingdom, whatever his early connections 
might have been, was in office, and called himself a Whig. 
But this extraordinary appearance of concord was quite 
delusive. The administration itself was distracted by 

15 bitter enmities and conflicting pretensions. The chief 
object of its members was to depress and supplant each 
other. The prime minister, Newcastle, weak, timid, 
jealous, and perfidious, was at once detested and despised 
by some of the most important members of his govern- 

20 ment, and by none more than by Henry Fox, the Secre- 
tary at War. This able, daring, and ambitious man seized 
every opportunity of crossing the First Lord of the Treas- 
ury, from whom he well knew that he had little to dread 
and little to hope; for Newcastle was through life equally 

25 afraid of breaking with men of parts and of promoting 
them. 

Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members 
for St. Michael, one of those wretched Cornish boroughs 
which were swept away by the Reform Act in 1832. He 

30 was opposed by Lord Sandwich, whose influence had long 
been paramount there: and Fox exerted himself strenu- 
ously in Sandwich's behalf. Clive, who had been intro- 
duced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was 



LORD CLIVE 35 

brought forward on the Sandwich interest, and was re- 
turned. But a petition was presented against the return, 
and was backed by the whole influence of the Duke of 
Newcastle. 

The case was heard, according to the usage of that time, 5 
before a committee of the whole House. Questions respect- 
ing elections were then considered merely as party ques- 
tions. Judicial impartiality was not even affected. Sir 
Robert Walpole was in the habit of saying openly that, in 
election battles, there ought to be no quarter. On the 10 
present occasion the excitement was great. The matter 
really at issue was, not whether Clive had been properly 
or improperly returned, but whether Newcastle or Fox 
was to be master of the New House of Commons, and con- 
sequently first minister. The contest was long and ob- 15 
stinate, and success seemed to lean sometimes to one side 
and sometimes to the other. Fox put forth all his rare 
powers of debate, beat half the lawyers in the House at 
their own weapons, and carried division after division 
against the whole influence of the Treasury. The com- 20 
mittee decided in dive's favour. But when the resolution 
was reported to the House, things took a different course. 
The remnant of the Tory Opposition, contemptible as it 
was, had yet sufficient weight to turn the scale between 
the nicely-balanced parties of Newcastle and Fox. New- 25 
castle the Tories could only despise. Fox they hated, as 
the boldest and most subtle politician and the ablest de- 
bater among the Whigs, as the steady friend of Walpole, as 
the devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland. After 
wavering till the last moment, they determined to vote in a 30 
body with the Prime Minister's friends. The consequence 
was that the House, by a small majority, rescinded the 
decision of the committee, and Clive was unseated. 



36 LORD CLIVE 

Ejected from Parliament and straitened in his means, 
he naturally began to look again towards India. The 
Company and the Government were eager to avail them- 
selves of his services. A treaty favourable to England 
5 had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic. Dupleix had 
been superseded, and had returned with the wreck of his 
immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chica- 
nery soon hunted him to his grave. But many signs in- 
dicated that a war between France and Great Britain 

10 was at hand; and it was therefore thought desirable to 
send an able commander to the Company's settlements in 
India. The Directors appointed Clive governor of Fort 
St. David. The king gave bim the commission of lieu- 
tenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again 

15 sailed for Asia. 

The first service on which he was employed after his 
return to the East was the reduction of the stronghold 
of Gheriah. This fortress, built on a craggy promontory, 
and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a 

20 pirate named Angria, whose barks had long been the terror 
of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral Watson, who commanded 
the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned Angria's 
fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land. The 
place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred and fifty thou- 

25 sand pounds sterling was divided among the conquerors. 

After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government 

of Fort St. David. Before he had been there two months 

he received intelligence which called forth all the energy 

of his bold and active mind. 

30 Of the provinces which had been subject to the House 
of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of 
India possessed such natural advantages, both for agri- 
culture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing through 



LORD CLIVE 37 

a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a vast plain of 
rich mould which, even under the tropical sky, rivals the 
verdure of an English April. The rice fields yield an in- 
crease such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar, vege- 
table oils, are produced with marvellous exuberance. The 5 
rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish. The desolate 
islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, 
and swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated 
districts with abundance of salt. The great stream which 
fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway 10 
of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its 
tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splen- 
did capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. The 
tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the 
overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussul- 15 
man despot, and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was 
known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the 
rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. 
Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of 
its granaries; and the noble ladies of London and Paris 20 
were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms. The 
race by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a 
soft climate and accustomed to peaceful avocations, bore 
the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics gen- 
erally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. 25 
The Castilians have a proverb that in Valencia the earth 
is water and the men women; and the description is at 
least equally applicable to the vast plain of the Lower 
Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. 
His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from 30 
bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and sin- 
gularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages 
in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. 



38 LORD CLIVE 

We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees 
in the whole army of the East India Company. There 
never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by 
nature and by habit for a foreign yoke. 
5 The great commercial companies of Europe had long 
possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, 
as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley. Higher 
up the stream the Dutch traders held Chinsurah. Nearer 
to the sea, the English had built Fort William. A church 

10 and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A row of 
spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East 
India Company, lined the banks of the river; and in the 
neighbourhood had sprung up a large and busy native 
town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence 

15 had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by 
the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable 
huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to water- 
fowl and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, 
and the Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset 

20 with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground 
on which the settlement stood, the English, like other 
great landholders, paid rent to the government; and they 
were, like other great landholders, permitted to exercise 
a certain jurisdiction within their domain. 

25 The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and 
Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the 
English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the other 
viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. 
He died in 1756, and the sovereignty descended to his 

30 grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who bore 
the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are per- 
haps the worst class of human beings; and this unhappy 
boy was one of the worst specimens of his class. His 



LORD CLIVE 39 

understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper natu- 
rally unamiable. His education had been such as would 
have enervated even a vigorous intellect and perverted 
even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable, be- 
cause nobody ever dared to reason with him, and selfish, 5 
because he had never been made to feel himself dependent 
on the good- will of others. Early debauchery had un- 
nerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately 
in the use of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain 
almost to madness. His chosen companions were flat- 10 
terers, sprung from the dregs of the people, and recom- 
mended by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is 
said that he had arrived at that last stage of human de- 
pravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, 
when the sight of pain, as pain, where no advantage is to 15 
be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an 
agreeable excitement. It had early been his amusement 
to torture beasts and birds; and, when he grew up, he 
enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of his fellow- 
creatures. 20 

From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. 
It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never op- 
posed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of 
the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; 
and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of 25 
perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even 
greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for 
what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal 
was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some 
other quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. 30 
The English, in expectation of a war with France, had 
begun to fortify their settlement without special permis- 
sion from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to 



40 LORD CLIVE 

plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been 
delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah 
marched with a great army against Fort William. 

The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced 
5 by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in 
Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and 
bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, 
who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was 
frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took 

10 refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant 
thought that he could not do better than follow so good 
an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance; 
and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of 
the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal 

15 pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered 
Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be 
brought before him. His Highness talked about the 
insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness 
of the treasure which he had found; but promised to 

20 spare their lives, and retired to rest. 

Then was committed that great crime, memorable for 
its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retri- 
bution by which it was followed. The English captives 
were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards 

25 determined to secure them for the night in the prison of 
the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of 
the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, 
that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too 
close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. 

30 The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the 
summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal 
can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England 
by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The 



LORD CLIVE 41 

number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. 
When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined 
that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on 
account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, 
they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. 5 
They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; 
they entreated; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut 
down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into 
the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly 
shut and locked upon them. 10 

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which 
Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had 
wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, ap- 
proaches the horrors which were recounted by the few 
survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They 15 
strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that 
extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large 
bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing 
could be done without the Nabob's orders, that the Nabob 
was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke 20 
him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They 
trampled each other down, fought for the places at the 
windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the 
cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, 
prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among 25 
them. The gaolers in the mean time held lights to the 
bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles 
of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low 
gaspings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob 
had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be 30 
opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could 
make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side 
the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had 



42 LORD CLIVE 

already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length 
a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such 
as their own mothers would not have known, staggered 
one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly 
5 dug. The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in 
number, were flung into it promiscuously, and covered up. 
But these things which, after the lapse of more than 
eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror, 
awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the 

10 savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the mur- 
derers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some 
of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were 
suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought 
that anything could be extorted were treated with ex- 

15 ecrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried 
before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, 
and sent him up the country in irons, together with some 
other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more 
than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company. 

20 These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that 
great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only 
with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of 
the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. 
One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was 

25 placed in the haram of the Prince at Moorshedabad. 

Surajah Dowlah, in the mean time, sent letters to his 
nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest 
in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in 
Fort William, forbade any Englishman to dwell in the 

30 neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his great 
actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alina- 
gore, that is to say, the Port of God. 

In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached 



LORD CLIVE 43 

Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. 
The cry of the whole settlement was for vengeance. With- 
in forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it 
was determined that an expedition should be sent to the 
Hoogley, and that Clive should be at the head of the land 5 
forces. The naval armament was under the command 
of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine 
troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, com- 
posed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had 
more subjects than Louis the Fifteenth or the Empress 10 
Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it 
had to make its way against adverse winds, and did not 
reach Bengal till December. 

The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moor- 
shedabad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state 15 
of foreign countries that he often used to say that there 
were not ten thousand men in all Europe; and it had never 
occurred to him as possible that the English would dare 
to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed by 
any fear of their military power, he began to miss them 20 
greatly. His revenues fell off; and his ministers succeeded 
in making him understand that a ruler may sometimes 
find it more profitable to protect traders in the open enjoy- 
ment of their gains than to put them to the torture for the 
purpose of discovering hidden chests of gold and jewels. 25 
He was already disposed to permit the Company to resume 
its mercantile operations in his country, when he received 
the news that an English armament was in the Hoogley. 
He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at Moor- 
shedabad, and marched towards Calcutta. 30 

Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. 
He took Budgebudge, routed the garrison of Fort William, 
recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The 



44 LORD CLIVE 

Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the 
English, was confirmed in his pacific disposition by these 
proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made 
overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and 
5 offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation 
to those whom he had despoiled. 

Clive's profession was war; and he felt that there was 
something discreditable in an accommodation with Sura- 
jah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, 

10 chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled 
from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs; and 
these persons were eager to be restored to their posts and 
compensated for their losses. The government of Madras, 
apprised that war had commenced in Europe, and appre- 

15 hensive of an attack from the French, became impatient 
for the return of the armament. The promises of the 
Nabob were large, the chances of a contest doubtful; and 
Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret 
that things should not be concluded in so glorious a manner 

20 as he could have wished. 

With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the 
life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier, 
carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the 
plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded 

25 as a statesman; and his military movements are to be 
considered as subordinate to his political designs. That 
in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and ob- 
tained great success, is unquestionable. But it is also un- 
questionable, that the transactions in which he now began 

30 to take a part have left a stain on his moral character. 
We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who 
is obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour and in- 
tegrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as little 



LORD CLIVE 45 

agree with Mr. Mill, who has gone so far as to say that 
Clive was a man "to whom deception, when it suited his 
purpose, never cost a pang." Clive seems to us to have 
been constitutionally the very opposite of a knave, bold 
even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, hearty in 5 
friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his private life, nor 
in those parts of his public life in which he had to do with 
his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to cun- 
ning. On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was 
engaged as an Englishman against Englishmen, from his 10 
boxing-matches at school to those stormy altercations 
at the India House and in Parliament amidst which his 
later years were passed, his very faults were those of a high 
and magnanimous spirit. The truth seems to have been 
that he considered Oriental politics as a game in which 15 
nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of mo- 
rality among the natives of India differed widely from that 
established in England. He knew that he had to deal 
with men destitute of what in Europe is called honour, 
with men who would give any promise without hesitation, 20 
and break any promise without shame, with men who 
would unscrupulously employ corruption, perjury, forgery, 
to compass their ends. His letters show that the great 
difference between Asiatic and European morality was 
constantly in his thoughts. He seems to have imagined, 25 
most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect noth- 
ing against such adversaries, if he was content to be bound 
by ties from which they were free, if he went on telling 
truth, and hearing none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, 
all his engagements with confederates who never kept 30 
an engagement that was not to their advantage. Accord- 
ingly this man, in the other parts of his life an honourable 
English gentleman and a soldier, was no sooner matched 



46 LORD CLI\T 

against an Indian intriguer, than he became himself an 
Indian intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to 
falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution 
of documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands. 
5 The negotiations between the English and the Xabob 
were carried on chiefly by two agents. Mr. Watts, a servant 
of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name of Omichund. 
This Omichund had been one of the wealthiest native 
merchants resident at Calcutta, and had sustained great 

10 losses in consequence of the Nabob's expedition against 
that place. In the course of his commercial transactions, 
he had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly 
qualified to serve as a medium of communication between 
them and a native court. He possessed great influence 

15 with his own race, and had in large measure the Hindoo 

talents, quick observation, tact, dexterity, perseverance, 

and the Hindoo vices, servility, greediness, and treachery. 

The Xabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an 

Indian statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose 

20 mind had been enfeebled by power and serf -indulgence. 
He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one time 
he advanced with his army in a threatening manner 
towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute front 
which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and 

25 consented to make peace with them on their own terms. 
The treaty was no sooner concluded than he formed new 
designs against them. He intrigued with the Erench 
authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to march 
from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to drive the English 

30 out of Bengal. All this was well known to Clive and 
Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a de- 
cisive blow, and to attack Chandernagore, before the 
force there could be strengthened by new arrivals, either 



LORD CLIYE 47 

from the south of India or from Europe. Watson directed 
the expedition by water, Give by land. The success of the 
combined movements was rapid and complete. The fort, 
the garrison, the artillery, the military stores, all fell into 
the hands of the English. Near rive hundred European 5 
troops were among the prisoners. 

The Xabob had feared and hated the English, even while 
he was still able to oppose to them their French rivals. 
The French were now vanquished; and he began to regard 
the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. 10 
His weak and unprincipled mind oscillated between ser- 
vility and insolence. One day he sent a large sum to Cal- 
cutta, as part of the compensation due for the wrongs which 
he had committed. The next day he sent a present of 
jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to 15 
hasten to protect Bengal " against Clive, the daring in war, 
on whom," says his Highness, "may all bad fortune at- 
tend." He ordered his army to march against the English. 
He countermanded his orders. He tore Give's letters. 
He then sent answers in the most florid language of com- 20 
pliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and 
threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and 
begged pardon for the insult. In the mean time, his 
wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute 
manners, and his love of the lowest company, had dis- 25 
gusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil 
functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, 
the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formi- 
dable confederacy was formed against him, in which were 
included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, 30 
the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, 
the richest banker in India. The plot was confided to the 
English agents, and a communication was opened be- 



48 LORD CLIVE 

tween the malcontents at Moorshedabad and the com- 
mittee at Calcutta. 

In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive's 
voice was given in favour of the conspirators, and his 
5 vigour and firmness bore down all opposition. It was 
determined that the English should lend their powerful 
assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah, and to place Meer 
JafTier on the throne of Bengal. In return, Meer Jaffier 
promised ample compensation to the Company and its 

10 servants, and a liberal donative to the army, the navy, 
and the committee. The odious vices of Surajah Dowlah, 
the wrongs which the English had suffered at his hands, 
the dangers to which our trade must have been exposed 
had he continued to reign, appear to us fully to justify the 

15 resolution of deposing him. But nothing can justify the 
dissimulation which Clive stooped to practise. He wrote 
to Surajah Dowlah in terms so affectionate that they for 
a time lulled that weak prince into perfect security. The 
same courier who carried this "soothing letter," as Clive 

20 calls it, to the Nabob, carried to Mr. Watts a letter in 
the following terms: "Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. 
I will join him with five thousand men who never turned 
their backs. Assure him I will march night and day to 
his assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man 

25 left." 

It was impossible that a plot which had so many rami- 
fications should long remain entirely concealed. Enough 
reached the ears of the Nabob to arouse his suspicions. 
But he was soon quieted by the fictions and artifices 

30 which the inventive genius of Omichund produced with 
miraculous readiness. All was going well; the plot was 
nearly ripe; when Clive learned that Omichund was 
likely to play false. The artful Bengalee had been prom- 



LORD CLIVE 49 

ised a liberal compensation for all that he had lost at 
Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His services 
had been great. He held the thread of the whole intrigue. 
By one word breathed in the ear of Surajah Dowlah, he 
could undo all that he had done. The lives of Watts, of 5 
Meer Jaffier, of all the conspirators, were at his mercy; 
and he determined to take advantage of his situation 
and to make his own terms. He demanded three hun- 
dred thousand pounds sterling as the price of his secrecy 
and of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the 10 
treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not what 
course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund's 
match in Omichund's own arts. The man, he said, was a 
villain. Any artifice which would defeat such knavery 
was justifiable. The best course would be to promise 15 
what was asked. Omichund would soon be at their 
mercy; and then they might punish him by withholding 
from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded, but 
also the compensation which all the other sufferers of 
Calcutta were to receive. 20 

His advice was taken. But how was the wary and 
sagacious Hindoo to be deceived? He had demanded that 
an article touching his claims should be inserted in the 
treaty between Meer JarHer and the English, and he would 
not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive 25 
had an expedient ready. Two treaties were drawn up, 
one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the 
latter fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was 
not mentioned; the latter, which was to be shown to him, 
contained a stipulation in his favour. 30 

But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had 
scruples about signing the red treaty. Omichund's 
vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of so 
5 



So LORD CLIVE 

important a name would probably awaken his suspicions. 
But Clive was not a man to do any thing by halves. We 
almost blush to write it. He forged Admiral Watson's 
name. 
5 All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly 
from Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, 
and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from 
that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs 
which the British had suffered, offered to submit the points 

10 in dispute to the arbitration of Meer Jamer, and concluded 
by announcing that, as the rains were about to set in, he 
and his men would do themselves the honour of waiting 
on his Highness for an answer. 

SurajahDowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and 

15 marched to encounter the English. It had been agreed 
that Meer Jamer should separate himself from the Nabob, 
and carry over his division to Clive. But, as the decisive 
moment approached, the fears of the conspirator over- 
powered his ambition. Clive had advanced to Cossim- 

20 buzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty power a few miles 
off at Plassey; and still Meer Jamer delayed to fulfil his 
engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest 
remonstrances of the English general. 

Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could 

25 place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of 
his confederate: and, whatever confidence he might place 
in his own military talents, and in the valour and dis- 
cipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage an 
army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before him 

30 lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but over 
which, if things went ill, not one of his little band would 
ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the 
last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank 



LORD CLIVE 51 

from the fearful responsibility of making a decision. He 
called a council of war. The majority pronounced against 
fighting; and Clive declared his concurrence with the 
majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had never 
called but one council of war, and that, if he had taken 5 
the advice of that council, the British would never have 
been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting 
broken up when he was himself again. He retired alone 
under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour 
there in thought. He came back determined to put 10 
every thing to the hazard, and gave orders that all should 
be in readiness for passing the river on the morrow. 

The river was passed; and at the close of a toilsome day's 
march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters 
in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of 15 
the enemy. Clive was unable to sleep ; he heard, through 
the whole night, the sound of drums and cymbals from the 
vast camp of the Nabob. It is not strange that even 
his stout heart should now and then have sunk, when he 
reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was in 20 
a few hours to contend. 

Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. His 
mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and 
horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and 
nearness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading 25 
every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, 
he sat gloomily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would 
have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with 
their last breath in the Black Hole. 

The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate 30 
of India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring 
through many openings from the camp, began to move 
towards the grove where the English lay. Forty thou- 



52 LORD CLIVE 

sand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows 
and arrows, covered the plain. They were accompanied 
by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged 
by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from 
5 behind by an elephant. Some smaller guns, under the 
direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more 
formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, 
not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from the 
bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces ; and the 

10 practised eye of Clive could perceive that both the men and 
the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. 
The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude 
consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly 
a thousand were English; and all were led by English 

15 officers, and trained in the English discipline. Conspicu- 
ous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the 
Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on its colours, 
amidst many honourable additions won under Wellington 
in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud 

20 motto, Primus in Indis. 

The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the 
artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while 
the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. 
Several of the most distinguished officers in Sura j ah 

25 Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through 
his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One 
of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of re- 
treating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with 
what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He 

30 ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his 
fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops 
to advance. The confused and dispirited multitude gave 
way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob 



LORD CLIVE 53 

attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely 
routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone ven- 
tured to confront the English, were swept down the 
stream of fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah 
Dowlah were dispersed, never to reassemble. Only five 5 
hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their camp, 
their guns, their baggage, innumerable waggons, innumer- 
able cattle, remained in the power of the conquerors. With 
the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, 
Clive had scattered an army of nearly sixty thousand men, 10 
and subdued an empire larger and more populous than 
Great Britain. 

Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during 
the action. But as soon as he saw that the fate of the day 
was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when 1 5 
the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. 
The next morning he repaired to the English quarters, 
not a little uneasy as to the reception which awaited him 
there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was 
drawn out to receive him with the honours due to his rank. 20 
But his apprehensions were speedily removed. Clive came 
forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted him as Nabob 
of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, 
listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to 
march without delay to Moorshedabad. 25 

Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with 
all the speed with which a fleet camel could carry him, and 
arrived at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four 
hours. . There he called his councillors round him. The 
wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of the 30 
English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear than 
deposition and confinement. But he attributed this 
suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to try the 



54 LORD CLIVE 

chance of war again. He approved the advice, and issued 
orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even 
during one day to a manly resolution. He learned that 
Meer Jaffier had arrived; and his terrors became insup- 
5 portable. Disguised in a mean dress, with a casket of 
jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night from a 
window of his palace, and, accompanied' by only two 
attendants, embarked on the river for Patna. 

In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted 

10 by two hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. 
For his residence had been assigned a palace, which was 
surrounded by a garden so spacious that all the troops 
who accompanied him could conveniently encamp within 
it. The ceremony of the installation of Meer Jamer was 

15 instantly performed. Clive led the new Nabob to the 
seat of honour, placed him on it, presented to him, after 
the immemorial fashion of the East, an offering of gold, 
and then, turning to the natives who filled the hall, con- 
gratulated them on the good fortune which had freed 

20 them from a tyrant. He was compelled on this occasion 
to use the services of an interpreter; for it is remarkable 
that, long as he resided in India, intimately acquainted 
as he was with Indian politics and with the Indian char- 
acter, and adored as he was by his Indian soldiery, he 

25 never learned to express himself with facility in any 
Indian language. He is said indeed to have been some- 
times under the necessity of employing, in his intercourse 
with natives of India, the smattering of Portuguese which 
he had acquired, when a lad in Brazil. 

30 The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the 
engagements into which he had entered with his allies. 
A conference was held at the house of Jugget Seit, the 
great banker, for the purpose of making the necessary 



LORD CLIVE 55 

arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully believing 
himself to stand high in the favour of dive, who, with dis- 
simulation surpassing even the dissimulation of Bengal, 
had up to that day treated him with undiminished kindness. 
The white treaty was produced and read. Clive then 5 
turned to Mr. Scrafton, one of the servants of the Com- 
pany, and said in English, "It is now time to undeceive 
Omichund." "Onuchund," said Mr. Scrafton in Hindos- 
tanee, "the red treaty is a trick. You are to have noth- 
ing." Omichund fell back insensible into the arms of his 10 
attendants. He revived; but his mind was irreparably 
ruined. Clive, who, though little troubled by scruples of 
conscience in his dealings with Indian politicians, was not 
inhuman, seems to have been touched. He saw Omichund 
a few days later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to 15 
make a pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, 
in the hope that change of scene might restore his health, 
and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had passed, 
again to employ him in the public service. But, from 
the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank 20 
gradually into idiocy. He, who had formerly been distin- 
guished by the strength of his understanding and the 
simplicity of his habits, now squandered the remains of 
his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to exhibit him- 
self dressed in rich garments, and hung with precious 25 
stones. In this abject state he languished a few months, 
and then died. 

We should not think it necessary to offer any remarks for 
the purpose of directing the judgment of our readers with 
respect to this transaction, had not Sir John Malcolm 30 
undertaken to defend it in all its parts. He regrets, 
indeed, that it was necessary to employ means so liable to 
abuse as forgery; but he will not admit that any blame 



6 LORD CLIVE 



attaches to those who deceived the deceiver. He thinks 
that the English were not bound to keep faith with one 
who kept no faith with them, and that, if they had ful- 
filled their engagements with the wily Bengalee, so signal 
5 an example of successful treason would have produced a 
crowd of imitators. Now, we will not discuss this point 
on any rigid principles of morality. Indeed, it is quite 
unnecessary to do so: for, looking at the question as a 
question of expediency in the lowest sense of the word, 

10 and using no arguments but such as Machiavelli might 
have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we are 
convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and 
that he committed, not merely a crime, but a blunder. 
That honesty is the best policy is a maxim which we 

15 firmly believe to be generally correct, even with respect 
to the temporal interests of individuals ; but, with respect 
to societies, the rule is subject to still fewer exceptions, 
and that, for this reason, that the life of societies is longer 
than the life of individuals. It is possible to mention 

20 men who have owed great worldly prosperity to breaches 
of private faith. But we doubt whether it be possible 
to mention a state which has on the whole been a gainer 
by a breach of public faith. The entire history of British 
India is an illustration of the great truth, that it is not 

25 prudent to oppose perfidy to perfidy, and that the most 
efficient weapon with which men can encounter falsehood 
is truth. During a long course of years, the English 
rulers of India, surrounded by allies and enemies whom 
no engagement could bind, have generally acted with 

30 sincerity and uprightness ; and the event has proved that 
sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. English valour 
and English intelligence have done less to extend and to 
preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity. All 



LORD OLIVE 57 

that we could have gained by imitating the doublings, 
the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries which have been 
employed against us, is as nothing, when compared with 
what we have gained by being the one power in India on 
whose word reliance can be placed. Xo oath which super- 5 
stition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a 
hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the 
"yea, yea," and "nay, nay," of a British envoy. No fast- 
ness, however strong by art or nature, gives to its inmates 
a security like that enjoyed by the chief who, passing 10 
through the territories of powerful and deadly enemies, 
is armed with the British guarantee. The mightiest 
princes of the East can scarcely, by the offer of enormous 
usury, draw forth any portion of the wealth which is con- 
cealed under the hearths of their subjects. The British 15 
Government offers little more than four per cent. ; and ava- 
rice hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from 
its most secret repositories. A hostile monarch may prom- 
ise mountains of gold to our sepoys, on condition that 
they will desert the standard of the Company. The 20 
Company promises only a moderate pension after a long 
service. But every sepoy knows that the promise of the 
Company will be kept: he knows that if he lives a hun- 
dred years his rice and salt are as secure as the salary of 
the Governor-General: and he knows that there is not 25 
another state in India which would not, in spite of the most 
solemn vows, leave him to die of hunger in a ditch as soon 
as he had ceased to be useful. The greatest advantage 
which a government can possess is to be the one trust- 
worthy government in the midst of governments which 30 
nobody can trust. This advantage we enjoy in Asia. Had 
we acted during the last two generations on the principles 
which Sir John Malcolm appears to have considered as 



58 LORD CLIVE 

sound, had we, as often as we had to deal with people like 
Omichund, retaliated by lying, and forging, and breaking 
faith, after their fashion, it is our firm belief that no cour- 
age or capacity could have upheld our empire. 
5 Sir John Malcolm admits that Clive's breach of faith 
could be justified only by the strongest necessity. As 
we think that breach of faith not only unnecessary, but 
most inexpedient, we need hardly say that we altogether 
condemn it. 

10 Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution. 
Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, 
and was brought before Meer Jafner. There he flung 
himself on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with 
tears and loud cries implored the mercy which he had 

15 never shown. Meer Jafner hesitated; but his son Meeran, 
a youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and sav- 
ageness of nature greatly resembled the wretched captive, 
was implacable. Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret 
chamber, to which in a short time the ministers of death 

20 were sent. In this act the English bore no part; and Meer 
Jarfler understood so much of their feelings, that he 
thought it necessary to apologise to them for having 
avenged them on their most malignant enemy. 

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Com- 

25 pany and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand 
pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river 
from Moorshedabad to Fort William. The fleet which 
conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred 
boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with flags 

30 flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few months 
before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than 
ever. Trade revived; and the signs of affluence appeared 
in every English house. As to Clive, there was no limit 



LORD CLIVE 59 

to his acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury 
of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were piled up, 
after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin, 
among which might not seldom be detected the florins and 
byzants with which, before any European ship had turned 5 
the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs 
and spices of the East. Clive walked between heaps of 
gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and 
was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two 
and three hundred thousand pounds. 10 

The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier and 
Clive were sixteen years later condemned by the public 
voice, and severely criticised in Parliament. They are 
vehemently defended by Sir John Malcolm. The accusers 
of the victorious general represented his gains as the wages 1 5 
of corruption, or as plunder extorted at the point of the 
sword from a helpless ally. The biographer, on the other 
hand, considers these great acquisitions as free gifts, hon- 
ourable alike to the donor and to the receiver, and com- 
pares them to the rewards bestowed by foreign powers on 20 
Marlborough, on Nelson, and on Wellington. It had always, 
he says, been customary in the East to give and receive 
presents; and there was, as yet, no Act of Parliament 
positively prohibiting English functionaries in India from 
profiting by this Asiatic usage. This reasoning, we own, 25 
does not quite satisfy us. We do not suspect Clive of sell- 
ing the interests of his employers or his country; but we 
cannot acquit him of having done what, if not in itself 
evil, was yet of evil example. Nothing is more clear than 
that a general ought to be the servant of his own govern- 30 
ment, and of no other. It follows that whatever rewards 
he receives for his services ought to be given either by his 
own government, or with the full knowledge and appro- 



60 LORD CLIVE 

bation of his own government. This rule ought to be 
strictly maintained even with respect to the merest bauble, 
with respect to a cross, a medal, or a yard of coloured 
riband. But how can any government be well served, 
5 if those who command its forces are at liberty, without 
its permission, without its privity, to accept princely 
fortunes from its allies? It is idle to say that there was 
then no Act of Parliament prohibiting the practice of 
taking presents from Asiatic sovereigns. It is not on the 

10 Act which was passed at a later period for the purpose 
of preventing any such taking of presents, but on grounds 
which were valid before that Act was passed, on grounds 
of common law and common sense, that we arraign the 
conduct of Clive. There is no Act that we know of, 

15 prohibiting the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 
from being in the pay of continental powers. But it is 
not the less true that a Secretary who should receive a 
secret pension from France would grossly violate his 
duty, and would deserve severe punishment. Sir John 

20 Malcolm compares the conduct of Clive with that of the 
Duke of Wellington. Suppose — and we beg pardon 
for putting such a supposition even for the sake of argu- 
ment — that the Duke of Wellington had, after the cam- 
paign of 181 5, and while he commanded the army of 

25 occupation in France, privately accepted two hundred 
thousand pounds from Louis the Eighteenth, as a mark 
of gratitude for the great services which his Grace had 
rendered to the House of Bourbon; what would be thought 
of such a transaction? Yet the statute-book no more 

30 forbids the taking of presents in Europe now than it 
forbade the taking of presents in Asia then. 

At the same time, it must be admitted that, in Clive's 
case, there were many extenuating circumstances. He 



LORD CLIVE 61 

considered himself as the general, not of the Crown, but of 
the Company. The Company had, by implication at least, 
authorized its agents to enrich themselves by means of the 
liberality of the native princes, and by other means still 
more objectionable. It was hardly to be expected that the 5 
servant should entertain stricter notions of his duty than 
were entertained by his masters. Though Clive did not 
distinctly acquaint his employers with what had taken 
place, and request their sanction, he did not, on the other 
hand, by studied concealment, show that he was conscious 10 
of having done wrong. On the contrary, he avowed with 
the greatest openness that the Nabob's bounty had raised 
him to affluence. Lastly, though we think that he ought 
not in such a way to have taken any thing, we must admit 
that he deserves praise for having taken so little. He ac- 1 5 
cepted twenty lacs of rupees. It would have cost him only 
a word to make the twenty forty. It was a very easy ex- 
ercise of virtue to declaim in England against Clive's 
rapacity; but not one in a hundred of his accusers would 
have shown so much self-command in the treasury of Moor- 20 
shedabad. 

Meer Jaffier could be upheld on the throne only by the 
hand which had placed him on it. He was not, indeed, a 
mere boy; nor had he been so unfortunate as to be born 
in the purple. He was not therefore quite so imbecile or 25 
quite so depraved as his predecessor had been. But he 
had none of the talents or virtues which his post required; 
and his son and heir, Meeran, was another Surajah Dow- 
lah. The recent revolution had unsettled the minds of 
men. Many chiefs were in open insurrection against 30 
the new Nabob. The viceroy of the rich and powerful 
province of Oude, who, like the other viceroys of the 
Mogul, was now in truth an independent sovereign, men- 



62 LORD CLIVE 

aced Bengal with invasion. Nothing but the talents and 
authority of Clive could support the tottering govern- 
ment. While things were in this state a ship arrived with 
despatches which had been written at the India House 
5 before the news of the battle of Plassey had reached Lon- 
don. The Directors had determined to place the English 
settlements in Bengal under a government constituted in 
the most cumbrous and absurd manner; and, to make the 
matter worse, no place in the arrangement was assigned 

10 to Clive. The persons who were selected to form this 
new government, greatly to their honour, took on them- 
selves the responsibility of disobeying these preposterous 
orders, and invited Clive to exercise the supreme authority. 
He consented; and it soon appeared that the servants of 

15 the Company had only anticipated the wishes of their 
employers. The Directors, on receiving news of Clive 's 
brilliant success, instantly appointed him governor of 
their possessions in Bengal, with the highest marks of 
gratitude and esteem. His power was now boundless, 

20 and far surpassed even that which Dupleix had attained 
in the south of India. Meer Jaffier regarded him with 
slavish awe. On one occasion, the Nabob spoke with 
severity to a native chief of high rank, whose followers 
had been engaged in a brawl with some of the Company's 

25 sepoys. "Are you yet to learn," he said, "who that 
Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed 
him?" The chief, who, as a famous jester and an old 
friend of Meer Jaffier, could venture to take liberties, 
answered, "I affront the Colonel! I, who never get up 

30 in the morning without making three low bows to his 
jackass!" This was hardly an exaggeration. Europeans 
and natives were alike at Clive's feet. The English re- 
garded him as the only man who could force Meer Jaffier 



LORD CLIVE 63 

to keep his engagements with them. Meer Jaffier regarded 
him as the only man who could protect the new dynasty 
against turbulent subjects and encroaching neighbours. 

It is but justice to say that Clive used his power ably and 
vigorously for the advantage of his country. He sent 5 
forth an expedition against the tract lying to the north of 
the Carnatic. In this tract the French still had the 
ascendency; and it was important to dislodge them. The 
conduct of the enterprise was intrusted to an officer of the 
name of Forde, who was then little known, but in whom 10 
the keen eye of the Governor had detected military talents 
of a high order. The success of the expedition was rapid 
and splendid. 

While a considerable part of the army of Bengal was 
thus engaged at a distance, a new and formidable danger 15 
menaced the western frontier. The Great Mogul was a 
prisoner at Delhi in the hands of a subject. His eldest 
son, named Shah Alum, destined to be, during many years, 
the sport of adverse fortune, and to be a tool in the hands 
first of the Mahrattas, and then of the English, had fled 20 
from the palace of his father. His birth was still revered 
in India. Some powerful princes, the Nabob of Oude in 
particular, were inclined to favour him. Shah Alum found 
it easy to draw to his standard great numbers of the mili- 
tary adventurers with whom every part of the country 25 
swarmed. An army of forty thousand men, of various 
races and religions, Mahrattas, Rohillas, Jauts, and Af- 
ghans, was speedily assembled round him; and he formed 
the design of overthrowing the upstart whom the English 
had elevated to a throne, and of establishing his own 30 
authority throughout Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. 

Meer Jaffier's terror was extreme; and the only expe- 
dient which occurred to him was to purchase, by the 



64 LORD CLIVE 

payment of a large sum of money, an accommodation 
with Shah Alum. This expedient had been repeatedly 
employed by those who, before him, had ruled the rich 
and unwarlike provinces near the mouth of the Ganges. 
5 But Clive treated the suggestion with a scorn worthy of 
his strong sense and dauntless courage. "If you do 
this," he wrote, "you will have the Nabob of Oude, the 
Mahrattas, and many more, come from all parts of the 
confines of your country, who will bully you out of money 

10 till you have none left in your treasury. I beg your 
excellency will rely on the fidelity of the English, and 
of those troops which are attached to you." He wrote 
in a similar strain to the governor of Patna, a brave 
native soldier whom he highly esteemed. "Come to no 

15 terms; defend your city to the last. Rest assured that 
the English are stanch and firm friends, and that they 
never desert a cause in which they have once taken a 
part." 

He kept his word. Shah Alum had invested Patna, 

20 and was on the point of proceeding to storm,, when he 
learned that the Colonel was advancing by forced marches. 
The whole army which was approaching consisted of only 
four hundred and fifty Europeans, and two thousand five 
hundred sepoys. But Clive and his Englishmen were 

25 now objects of dread over all the East. As soon as his 
advanced guard appeared, the besiegers fled before him. 
A few French adventurers who were about the person of 
the prince advised him to try the chance of battle; but in 
vain. In a few days this great army, which had been 

30 regarded with so much uneasiness by the Court of Moor- 
shedabad, melted away before the mere terror of the 
British name. 
The conqueror returned in triumph to Fort William.. 



LORD CLIVE 65 

The joy of Meer Jaffier was as unbounded as his fears had 
been, and led him to bestow on his preserver a princely 
token of gratitude. The quit-rent which the East India 
company were bound to pay to the Nabob for the extensive 
lands held by them to the south of Calcutta amounted 5 
to near thirty thousand pounds sterling a year. The 
whole of this splendid estate, sufficient to support with 
dignity the highest rank of the British peerage, was now 
conferred on Clive for life. 

This present we think Clive justified in accepting. It 10 
was a present which, from its very nature, could be no 
secret. In fact, the Company itself was his tenant, and, 
by its acquiescence, signified its approbation of Meer 
Jaffier's grant. 

But the gratitude of Meer Jaffier did not last long. He 15 
had for some time felt that the powerful ally who had set 
him up might pull him down, and had been looking round 
for support against the formidable strength by which he 
had himself been hitherto supported. He knew that it 
would be impossible to find among the natives of India any 20 
force which would look the Colonel's little army in the 
face. The French power in Bengal was extinct. But the 
fame of the Dutch had anciently been great in the Eastern 
seas; and it was not yet distinctly known in Asia how much 
the power of Holland had declined in Europe. Secret com- 25 
munications passed between the Court of Moorshedabad 
and the Dutch factory at Chinsurah; and urgent letters 
were sent from Chinsurah, exhorting the government of 
Batavia to fit out an expedition which might balance the 
power of the English in Bengal. The authorities of Bata- 30 
via, eager to extend the influence of their country, and still 
more eager to obtain for themselves a share of the wealth 
which had recently raised so many English adventurers 
6 



66 LORD CLIVE 

to opulence, equipped a powerful armament. Seven large 
ships from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. 
The military force on board amounted to fifteen hun- 
dred men, of whom about one half were Europeans. The 
5 enterprise was well timed. Clive had sent such large 
attachments to oppose the French in the Carnatic that 
his army was now inferior in number to that of the Dutch. 
He knew that Meer Jaffier secretly favoured the invaders. 
He knew that he took on himself a serious responsibility 

10 if he attacked the forces of a friendly power; that the 
English ministers could not wish to see a war with Hol- 
land added to that in which they were already engaged 
with France; that they might disavow his acts; that they 
might punish him. He had recently remitted a great 

15 part of his fortune to Europe, through the Dutch East 
India Company; and he had therefore a strong interest 
in avoiding any quarrel. But he was satisfied, that if 
he suffered the Batavian armament to pass up the river and 
to join the garrison of Chinsurah, Meer Jafiier would 

20 throw himself into the arms of these new allies, and that 
the English ascendency in Bengal would be exposed to 
most serious danger. He took his resolution with char- 
acteristic boldness, and was most ably seconded by his 
officers, particularly by Colonel Forde, to whom the most 

25 important part of the operations was intrusted. The 
Dutch attempted to force a passage. The English en- 
countered them both by land and water. On both ele- 
ments the enemy had a great superiority of force. On 
both they were signally defeated. Their ships were 

30 taken. Their troops were put to a total rout. Almost 
all the European soldiers, who constituted the main 
strength of the invading army, were killed or taken. The 
conquerors sat down before Chinsurah; and the chiefs of 



LORD CLIVE 67 

that settlement, now thoroughly humbled, consented to 
the terms which Clive dictated. They engaged to build 
no fortifications, and to raise no troops beyond a small 
force necessary for the police of their factories; and it was 
distinctly provided that any violation of these covenants 5 
should be punished with instant expulsion from Bengal. 
Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for 
England. At home, honours and rewards awaited him, not 
indeed equal to his claims or to his ambition, but still such 
as, when his age, his rank in the army, and his original 10 
place in society are considered, must be pronounced rare 
and splendid. He was raised to the Irish peerage, and en- 
couraged to expect an English title. George the Third, 1 
who had just ascended the throne, received him with 
great distinction. The ministers paid him marked atten- 15 
tion; and Pitt, whose influence in the House of Commons 
and in the country was unbounded, was eager to mark 
his regard for one whose exploits had contributed so much 
to the lustre of that memorable period. The great orator 
had already in Parliament described Clive as a heaven- 20 
born general, as a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, 
had displayed a military genius which might excite the 
admiration of the King of Prussia. There were then no 
reporters in the gallery: but these words, emphatically 
spoken by the first statesman of the age, had passed from 25 
mouth to mouth, had been transmitted to Clive in Bengal, 
and had greatly delighted and flattered him. Indeed, since 
the death of Wolfe, Clive was the only English general of 
whom his countrymen had much reason to be proud. The 
Duke of Cumberland had been generally unfortunate; and 30 
his single victory, having been gained over his countrymen, 
and used with merciless severity, had been more fatal to 
his popularity than his many defeats. Conway, versed in 



68 LORD CLIVE 

the learning of his profession, and personally courageous, 
wanted vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, generous 
and as brave as a lion, had neither science nor genius. 
Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of 
5 his contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe, 
the imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. 
It was under the command of a foreign general that the 
British had triumphed at Minden and Warburg. The 
people therefore, as was natural, greeted with pride and 

10 delight a captain of their own, whose native courage and 
self-taught skill had placed him on a level with the great 
tacticians of Germany. 

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie 
with the first grandees of England. There remains proof 

15 that he had remitted more than a hundred and eighty 
thousand pounds through the Dutch East India Com- 
pany, and more than forty thousand pounds through the 
English Company. The amount which he had sent home 
through private houses was also considerable. He had 

20 invested great sums in jewels, then a very common mode 
of remittance from India. His purchases of diamonds, 
at Madras alone, amounted to twenty-five thousand 
pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money, he had 
his Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-seven 

25 thousand a year. His whole annual income, in the opinion 
of Sir John Malcolm, who is desirous to state it as low as 
possible, exceeded forty thousand pounds; and incomes 
of forty thousand pounds at the time of the accession of 
George the Third were at least as rare as incomes of a 

30 hundred thousand pounds now. We may safely affirm 
that no Englishman who started with nothing has ever, 
in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early 
age of thirty-four. 



LORD CLIVE 69 

It would be unjust not to add that Clive made a credit- 
able use of his riches. As soon as the battle of Plassey 
had laid the foundation of his fortune, he sent ten thou- 
sand pounds to his sisters, bestowed as much more on other 
poor friends and relations, ordered his agent to pay eight 5 
hundred a year to his parents, and to insist that they should 
keep a carriage, and settled five hundred a year on his old 
commander Lawrence, whose means were very slender. 
The whole sum which Clive expended in this manner may 
be calculated at fifty thousand pounds. 10 

He now set himself to cultivate parliamentary interest. 
His purchases of land seem to have been made in a great 
measure with that view, and, after the general election of 
1 76 1, he found himself in the House of Commons, at the head 
of a body of dependents whose support must have been 15 
important to any administration. In English politics, 
however, he did not take a prominent part. His first 
attachments, as we have seen, were to Mr. Fox; at a later 
period he was attracted by the genius and success of Mr. 
Pitt; but finally he connected himself in the closest manner 20 
with George Grenville. Early in the session of 1764, when 
the illegal and impolitic persecution of that worthless 
demagogue Wilkes had strongly excited the public mind, 
the town was amused by an anecdote, which we have seen 
in some unpublished memoirs of Horace Walpole. Old 25 
Mr. Richard Clive, who, since his son's elevation, had been 
introduced into society for which his former habits had not 
well fitted him, presented himself at the levee. The 
King asked him where Lord Clive was. "He will be in 
town very soon," said the old gentleman, loud enough 30 
to be heard by the whole circle, "and then your Majesty 
will have another vote." 

But in truth all Clive 's views were directed towards the 



70 LORD CLIVE 

country in which he had so eminently distinguished him- 
self as a soldier and a statesman; and it was by considera- 
tions relating to India that his conduct as a public man 
in England was regulated. The power of the Company, 
5 though an anomaly, is in our time, we are firmly per- 
suaded, a beneficial anomaly. In the time of Clive, it 
was not merely an anomaly, but a nuisance. There was 
no Board of Control. The Directors were for the most 
part mere traders, ignorant of general politics, igno- 

10 rant of the peculiarities of the empire which had strangely 
become subject to them. The Court of Proprietors, 
wherever it chose to interfere, was able to have its way. 
That court was more numerous, as well as more pow- 
erful than at present; for then every share of five hun- 

15 dred pounds conferred a vote. The meetings were large, 
stormy, even riotous, the debates indecently virulent. All 
the turbulence of a Westminster election, all the trickery 
and corruption of a Grampound election, disgraced the pro- 
ceedings of this assembly on questions of the most solemn 

20 importance. Fictitious votes were manufactured on a 
gigantic scale. Clive himself laid out a hundred thousand 
pounds in the purchase of stock, which he then divided 
among nominal proprietors on whom he could depend, and 
whom he brought down in his train, to every discussion and 

25 every ballot. Others did the same, though not to quite so 
enormous an extent. 

The interest taken by the public of England in Indian 
questions was then far greater than at present, and the 
reason is obvious. At present a writer enters the service 

30 young; he climbs slowly; he is fortunate if, at forty-five, he 
can return to his country with an annuity of a thousand 
a year, and with savings amounting to thirty thousand 
pounds. A great quantity of wealth is made by English 



LORD CLIVE 71 

functionaries in India; but no single functionary makes 
a very large fortune, and what is made is slowly, hardly, 
and honestly earned. Only four or five high political 
offices are reserved for public men from England. The 
residencies, the secretaryships, the seats in the boards 5 
of revenue and in the Sudder courts, are all filled by 
men who have given the best years of life to the ser- 
vice of the Company; nor can any talents however 
splendid or any connections however powerful obtain 
those lucrative posts for any person who has not 10 
entered by the regular door, and mounted by the regu- 
lar gradations. Seventy years ago, less money was 
brought home from the East than in our time. But it 
was divided among a very much smaller number of persons, 
and immense sums were often accumulated in a few 15 
months. Any Englishman, whatever his age might be, 
might hope to be one of the lucky emigrants. If he made 
a good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a clever 
pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent out 
in the Company's service, and might return in three or four 20 
years as rich as Pigot or as Clive. Thus the India House 
was a lottery office, which invited every body to take a 
chance, and held out ducal fortunes as the prizes destined 
for the lucky few. As soon as it was known that there 
was a part of the world where a lieutenant-colonel had one 25 
morning received as a present an estate as large as that of 
the Earl of Bath or the Marquis of Rockingham, and 
where it seemed that such a trifle as ten or twenty thou- 
sand pounds was to be had by any British functionary for 
the asking, society began to exhibit all the symptoms of the 30 
South Sea year, a feverish excitement, an ungovernable im- 
patience to be rich, a contempt for slow, sure, and moderate 
gains. 



72 LORD CLIVE 

At the head of the preponderating party in the India 
House, had long stood a powerful, able, and ambitious 
director of the name of Sulivan. He had conceived a 
strong jealousy of Clive, and remembered with bitterness 
5 the audacity with which the late governor of Bengal had 
repeatedly set at nought the authority of the distant 
Directors of the Company. An apparent reconciliation 
took place after Clive's arrival; but enmity remained 
deeply rooted in the hearts of both. The whole body 

10 of Directors was then chosen annually. At the election 
of 1763, Clive attempted to break down the power of the 
dominant faction. The contest was carried on with a 
violence which he describes as tremendous. Sulivan was 
victorious, and hastened to take his revenge. The grant 

15 of rent which Clive had received from Meer Jaffier was, 
in the opinion of the best English lawyers, valid. It had 
been made by exactly the same authority from which the 
Company had received their chief possessions in Bengal, 
and the Company had long acquiesced in it. The Direc- 

20 tors, however, most unjustly determined to confiscate it, 
and Clive was forced to file a bill in Chancery against 
them. 

But a great and sudden turn in affairs was at hand. 
Every ship from Bengal had for some time brought alarm- 

25 ing tidings. The internal misgovernment of the province 
had reached such a point that it could go no further. 
What, indeed, was to be expected from a body of public 
servants exposed to temptation such that, as Clive once 
said, flesh and blood could not bear it, armed with irresist- 

30 ible power, and responsible only to the corrupt, turbu- 
lent, distracted, ill-informed Company, situated at such 
a distance that the average interval between the sending 
of a despatch and the receipt of an answer was above a 



LORD CLIVE 73 

year and a half? Accordingly, during the five years which 
followed the departure of Clive from Bengal, the misgov- 
ernment of the English was carried to a point such as seems 
hardly compatible with the very existence of society. The 
Roman proconsul, who, in a year or two, squeezed out of 5 
a province the means of rearing marble palaces and baths 
on the shores of Campania, of drinking from amber, of 
feasting on singing birds, of exhibiting armies of gladiators 
and flocks of camelopards, the Spanish viceroy, who, leav- 
ing behind him the curses of Mexico or Lima, entered Madrid 1 
with a long train of gilded coaches, and of sumpter-horses 
trapped and shod with silver, were now outdone. Cruelty, 
indeed, properly so called, was not among the vices of 
the servants of the Company. But cruelty itself could 
hardly have produced greater evils than sprang from their 15 
unprincipled eagerness to be rich. They pulled down their 
creature, Meer Jaffier. They set up in his place another 
Nabob, named Meer Cossim. But Meer Cossim had 
parts and a will; and, though sufficiently inclined to op- 
press his subjects himself, he could not bear to see them 20 
ground to the dust by oppressions which yielded him no 
profit nay, which destroyed his revenue in the very source. 
The English accordingly pulled down Meer Cossim, and 
set up Meer Jaffier again; and Meer Cossim, after re- 
venging himself by a massacre surpassing in atrocity that 25 
of the Black Hole, fled to the dominions of the Nabob of 
Oude. At every one of these revolutions, the new prince 
divided among his foreign masters whatever could be 
scraped together in the treasury of his fallen predecessor. 
The immense population of his dominions was given up as 30 
a prey to those who had made him a sovereign, and who 
could unmake him. The servants of the Company ob- 
tained, not for their employers, but for themselves, a 



74 LORD CLIVE 

monopoly of almost the whole internal trade. They 
forced the natives to buy dear and to sell cheap. They 
insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the 
fiscal authorities of the country. They covered with 
5 their protection a set of native dependents who ranged 
through the provinces, spreading desolation and terror 
wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British 
factor was armed with all the power of his master; and 
his master was armed with all the power of the Company. 

10 Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at 
Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were 
reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had 
been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under 
tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the 

15 Company thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah. 
Under their old masters they had at least one resource: 
when the evil became insupportable, the people rose and 
pulled down the government. But the English govern- 
ment was not to be so shaken off. That government, 

20 oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian 
despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilisation. 
It resembled the government of evil Genii, rather than 
the government of human tyrants. Even despair could 
not inspire the soft Bengalee with courage to confront 

25 men of English breed, the hereditary nobility of mankind, 
whose skill and valour had so often triumphed in spite 
of tenfold odds. The unhappy race never attempted 
resistance. Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. 
Sometimes they fled from the white man, as their fathers 

30 had been used to fly from the Mahratta; and the palan- 
quin of the English traveller was often carried through 
silent villages and towns, which the report of his approach 
had made desolate. 



LORD CLIVE 75 

The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of ha- 
tred to all the neighbouring powers; and to all the haughty- 
race presented a dauntless front. The English armies, 
every where outnumbered, were every where victorious. 
A succession of commanders, formed in the school of Clive, 5 
still maintained the fame of their country. "It must be 
acknowledged," says the Mussulman historian of those 
times, "that this nation's presence of mind, firmness of 
temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question. 
They join the most resolute courage to the most cautious 10 
prudence; nor have they their equals in the art of ranging 
themselves in battle array and fighting in order. If to so 
many military qualifications they knew how to join the arts 
of government, if they exerted as much ingenuity and solici- 
tude in relieving the people of God, as they do in whatever 1 5 
concerns their military affairs, no nation in the worldwould 
be preferable to them, or worthier of command. But the 
people under their dominion groan every where, and are 
reduced to poverty and distress. Oh God! come to the 
assistance of thine afflicted servants, and deliver them 20 
from the oppressions which they suffer." 

It was impossible, however, that even the military es- 
tablishment should long continue exempt from the vices 
which pervaded every other part of the government. 
Rapacity, luxury, and the spirit of insubordination 25 
spread from the civil service to the officers of the army, 
and from the officers to the soldiers. The evil con- 
tinued to grow till every mess-room became the seat of 
conspiracy and cabal, and till the sepoys could be kept 
in order only by wholesale executions. 30 

At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite 
uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions; a dis- 
organized administration; the natives pillaged, yet the 



76 LORD CLIVE 

Company not enriched; every fleet bringing back fortu- 
nate adventurers who were able to purchase manors and 
to build stately dwellings, yet bringing back also alarm- 
ing accounts of the financial prospects of the govern- 
5 ment; war on the frontiers; disaffection in the army; the 
national character disgraced by excesses resembling those 
of Verres and Pizarro; such was the spectacle which dis- 
mayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. 
The general cry was that dive, and Clive alone, could 

10 save the empire which he had founded. 

This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner 
at a very full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all 
parties, forgetting their feuds and trembling for their 
dividends, exclaimed that Clive was the man whom the 

15 crisis required, that the oppressive proceedings which 
had been adopted respecting his estate ought to be dropped, 
and that he ought to be entreated to return to India. 

Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make 
such propositions to the Directors as would, he trusted, 

20 lead to an amicable settlement. But there was a still 
greater difficulty. It was proper to tell them that he never 
would undertake the government of Bengal while his 
enemy Sulivan was chairman of the Company. The 
tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a 

25 hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly 
was on Clive's side. Sulivan wished to try the result 
of a ballot. But, according to the by-laws of the Com- 
pany, there can be no ballot except on a requisition 
signed by nine proprietors; and, though hundreds were 

30 present, nine persons could not be found to set their 
hands to such a requisition. 

Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and 
Commander-in-Chief of the British possessions in Bengal. 



LORD CLIVE 77 

But he adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter on 
his office till the event of the next election of Directors 
should be known. The contest was obstinate; but Clive 
triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master of the 
India House, was within a vote of losing his own seat; and 5 
both the chairman and the deputy-chairman were friends 
of the new governor. 

Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive 
sailed for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, 
he reached Calcutta; and he found the whole machine of 10 
government even more fearfully disorganized than he had 
anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some time before lost 
his eldest son Meeran, had died while Clive was on his 
voyage out. The English functionaries at Calcutta had 
already received from home strict orders not to accept 15 
presents from the native princes. But, eager for gain, 
and unaccustomed to respect the commands of their dis- 
tant, ignorant, and negligent masters, they again set up 
the throne of Bengal to sale. About one hundred and forty 
thousand pounds' sterling were distributed among nine of 20 
the most powerful servants of the Company; and, in con- 
sideration of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob 
was placed on the seat of his father. The news of the igno- 
minious bargain met Clive on his arrival. In a private 
letter written immediately after his landing to an intimate 25 
friend, he poured out his feelings in language which, pro- 
ceeding from a man so daring, so resolute, and so little 
given to theatrical display of sentiment, seems to us singu- 
larly touching. "Alas!" he says, "how is the English 
name sunk! I could not avoid paying the tribute of a 30 
few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British 
nation — irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, 
by that great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and 



78 LORD CLIVE 

to whom we must be accountable if there be a hereafter, 
that I am come out with a mind superior to all corruption, 
and that I am determined to destroy these great and 
growing evils, or perish in the attempt." 
5 The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full 
determination to make a thorough reform, and to use 
for that purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil 
and military, which had been confided to him. John- 
stone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly, 

i o made some show of opposition. Clive interrupted him, 
and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question 
the power of the new government. Johnstone was cowed, 
and disclaimed any such intention. All the faces round 
the board grew long and pale; and not another syllable 

1 5 of dissent was uttered. 

Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India 
about a year and a half; and in that short time effected 
one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms 
that ever was accomplished by any statesman. This was 

20 the part of his life on which he afterwards looked back 
with most pride. He had it in his power to triple his 
already splendid fortune; to connive at abuses while 
pretending to remove them; to conciliate the good-will 
of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their rapacity 

25 a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the 
island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose com- 
plaints had little chance of being heard across fifteen 
thousand miles of ocean. He knew that, if he applied 
himself in earnest to the work of reformation, he should 

30 raise every bad passion in arms against him. He knew 
how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be the hatred 
of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted on 
accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support 



LORD CLIVE 79 

peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But he 
had chosen the good part; and he called up all the force 
of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. 
At first success seemed hopeless; but soon all obstacles be- 
gan to bend before that iron courage and that vehement 5 
will. The receiving of presents from the natives was 
rigidly prohibited. The private trade of the servants of 
the Company was put down. The whole settlement 
seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures. 
But the inexorable governor declared that, if he could 10 
not find support at Fort William, he would procure it else- 
where, and sent for some civil servants from Madras to 
assist him in carrying on the administration. The most 
factious of his opponents he turned out of their offices. 
The rest submitted to what was inevitable; and in a very 15 
short time all resistance was quelled. 

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the 
recent abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which 
could not fail to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pres- 
sure of his strong hand was withdrawn. The Company 20 
had followed a mistaken policy with respect to the remu- 
neration of its servants. The salaries were too low to afford 
even those indulgences which are necessary to the health 
and comfort of Europeans in a tropical climate. To lay 
by a rupee from such scanty pay was impossible. It could 25 
not be supposed that men of even average abilities would 
consent to pass the best years of life in exile, under a burn- 
ing sun, for no other consideration than these stinted wages. 
It had accordingly been understood, from a very early 
period, that the Company's agents were at liberty to enrich 30 
themselves by their private trade. This practice had 
been seriously injurious to the commercial interests of the 
corporation. That very intelligent observer, Sir Thomas 



80 LORD CLIVE 

Roe, in the reign of James the First, strongly urged the 
Directors to apply a remedy to the abuse. "Absolutely 
prohibit the private trade," said he; "for your business 
will be better done. I know this is harsh. Men profess 
5 they come not for bare wages. But you will take away 
this plea if you give great wages to their content; and 
then you know what you part from." 

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered 
to the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at 

10 the indirect gains of the agents. The pay of a member 
of Council was only three hundred pounds a year. Yet 
it was notorious that such a functionary could not live 
in India for less than ten times that sum; and it could 
not be expected that he would be content to live even 

1 5 handsomely in India without laying up something against 
the time of his return to England. This system, before 
the conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount of the 
dividends payable to the proprietors, but could do little 
harm in any other way. But the Company was now a 

20 ruling body. Its servants might still be called factors, 
junior merchants, senior merchants. But they were in 
truth proconsuls, propraetors, procurators of extensive 
regions. They had immense power. Their regular pay 
was universally admitted to be insufficient. They were, 

25 by the ancient usage of the service, and by the implied 
permission of • their employers, warranted in enriching 
themselves by indirect means; and this had been the 
origin of the frightful oppression and corruption which 
had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly that it was 

30 absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in 
penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be 
effectual which should not be coupled with a plan for 
liberally remunerating the civil servants of the Company. 



LORD CLIVE 81 

The Directors, he knew, were not disposed to sanction 
any increase of the salaries out of their own treasury. 
The only course which remained open to the governor 
was one which exposed him to much misrepresentation, 
but which we think him fully justified in adopting. He 5 
appropriated to the support of the service the monopoly 
of salt, which has formed, down to our own time, a princi- 
pal head of Indian revenue; and he divided the proceeds 
according to a scale which seems to have been not un- 
reasonably fixed. He was in consequence accused by his 10 
enemies, and has been accused by historians, of disobeying 
his instructions, of violating his promises, of authorising 
that very abuse which it was his special mission to destroy, 
namely, the trade of the Company's servants. But 
every discerning and impartial judge will admit, that there 1 5 
was really nothing in common between the system which 
he set up and that which he was sent to destroy. The 
monopoly of salt had been a source of revenue to the 
governments of India before Clive was born. It con- 
tinued to be so long after his death. The civil servants 20 
were clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue; 
and all that Clive did was to charge a particular portion of 
the revenue with their maintenance. He thus, while he 
put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes had 
been rapidly accumulated, gave to every British function- 25 
ary employed in the East the means of slowly, but surely, 
acquiring a competence. Yet, such is the injustice of 
mankind that none of those acts which are the real stains 
of his life has drawn on him so much obloquy as this meas- 
ure, which was in truth a reform necessary to the success 30 
of all his other reforms. 

He had quelled the opposition of the civil service: that 
of the army was more formidable. Some of the retrench- 
7 



82 LORD CLIVE 

ments which had been ordered by the Directors affected 
the interests of the military service; and a storm arose, 
such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced. It 
was no light thing to encounter the resistance of those 
5 who held the power of the sword, in a country governed 
only by the sword. Two hundred English officers en- 
gaged in a conspiracy against the government, and de- 
termined to resign their commissions on the same day, 
not doubting that Clive would grant any terms rather 

10 than see the army, on which alone the British empire in 
the East rested, left without commanders. They little 
knew the unconquerable spirit with which they had to 
deal. Clive had still a few officers round his person on 
whom he could rely. He sent to Fort St. George for a 

15 fresh supply. He gave commissions even to mercantile 
agents who were disposed to support him at this crisis; 
and he sent orders that every officer who resigned should 
be instantly brought up to Calcutta. The conspirators 
found that they had miscalculated. The governor was 

20 inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys, over 
whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence, 
stood by him with unshaken fidelity. The leaders in 
the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, 
humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted to with- 

25 draw their resignations. Many of them declared their 
repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive 
treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly 
severe; but his severity was pure from all taint of private 
malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just authority 

30 of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries 
with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators 
was accused of having planned the assassination of 
the governor; but Clive would not listen to the 



LORD CLIVE 83 

charge. "The officers," he said, "are Englishmen, not 
assassins." 

While he reformed the civil service and established his 
authority over the army, he was equally successful in his 
foreign policy. His landing on Indian ground was the 5 
signal for immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude, with 
a large army, lay at that time on the frontier of Bahar. 
He had been joined by many Afghans and Mahrattas, and 
there was no small reason to expect a general coalition 
of all the native powers against the English. But the 10 
name of Clive quelled in an instant all opposition. The 
enemy implored peace in the humblest language, and 
submitted to such terms as the new governor chose to 
dictate. 

At the same time, the government of Bengal was placed 15 
on a new footing. The power of the English in that 
province had hitherto been altogether undefined. It was 
unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and it 
had been ascertained by no compact. It resembled the 
power which, in the last decreptitude of the Western 20 
Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs of 
foreign mercenaries, the Ricimers and the Odoacers, who 
put up and pulled down at their pleasure a succession of 
insignificant princes, dignified with the names of Caesar 
and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike 25 
strangers at length found it expedient to give to a domina- 
tion which had been established by arms the sanction of 
law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it poli- 
tic to obtain from the distant court of Byzantium a com- 
mission appointing him ruler of Italy; and Clive, in the 30 
same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal 
grant of the powers of which he already possessed the real- 
ity. The Mogul was absolutely helpless; and, though he 



84 LORD CLIVE 

murmured, had reason to be well pleased that the English 
were disposed to give solid rupees which he never could 
have extorted from them, in exchange for a few Persian 
characters which cost him nothing. A bargain was 
5 speedily struck; and the titular sovereign of Hindostan 
issued a warrant, empowering the Company to collect 
and administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. 
There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British 
authorities in the same relation in which the last drivel- 

10 ling Chilperics and Childerics of the Merovingian line 
stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the Palace, 
to Charles Martel and to Pepin. At one time Clive had 
almost made up his mind to discard this phantom alto- 
gether; but he afterwards thought that it might be con- 

15 venient still to use the name of the Nabob, particularly 
in dealings with other European nations. The French, 
the Dutch, and the Danes would, he conceived, submit 
far more readily to the authority of the native Prince, 
whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than 

20 to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, 
at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence 
was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on any body; 
and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier 
still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his 

25 house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by 
the English as "Your Highness," and is still suffered to 
retain a portion of the regal state which surrounded his 
ancestors. A pension of a hundred and sixty thousand 
pounds a year is annually paid to him by the government. 

30 His carriage is surrounded by guards, and preceded by 
attendants with silver maces. His person and his dwell- 
ing are exempted from the ordinary authority of the min- 
isters of justice. But he has not the smallest share of 



LORD CLIVE • 85 

political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy 
subject of the Company. 

It would have been easy for Clive, during his second ad- 
ministration in Bengal, to accumulate riches such as no 
subject in Europe possessed. He might indeed, without 5 
subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province to any 
pressure beyond that to which their mildest rulers had 
accustomed them, have received presents to the amount 
of three hundred thousand pounds a year. The neighbour- 
ing princes would gladly have paid any price for his 10 
favour. But he appears to have strictly adhered to the 
rules which he had laid down for the guidance of others. 
The Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of great value. 
The Nabob of Oude pressed him to accept a large sum of 
money and a casket of costly jewels. Clive courteously, 15; 
but peremptorily refused: and it should be observed that 
he made no merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not 
come to light till after his death. He kept an exact 
account of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing 
from the trade in salt, and of those presents which, accord- 20 
ing to the fashion of the East, it would be churlish to 
refuse. Out of the sum arising from these resources he 
defrayed the expenses of his situation. The surplus he 
divided among a few attached friends who had accom- 
panied him to India. He always boasted, and, as far as 25 
we can judge, he boasted with truth, that his last admin- 
istration diminished instead of increasing his fortune. 

One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had 
left him by will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in 
specie and jewels: and the rules which had been recently 30 
laid down extended only to presents from the living, and 
did not affect legacies from the dead. Clive took the 
money, but not for himself. He made the whole over to 



86 LORD CLIVE 

the Company, in trust for officers and soldiers invalided 
in their service. The fund which still bears his name 
owes its origin to this princely donation. 

After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health 

5 made it necessary for him to return to Europe. At the 

close of January, 1767, he quitted for the last time the 

country on whose destinies he had exercised so mighty 

an influence. 

His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, 

10 greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen. Numer- 
ous causes were already at work which embittered the 
remaining years of his life, and hurried him to an un- 
timely grave. His old enemies at the India House were 
still powerful and active; and they had been reinforced 

15 by a large band of allies whose violence far exceeded their 
own. The whole crew of pilferers and oppressors from 
whom he had rescued Bengal persecuted him with the 
implacable rancour which belongs to such abject natures. 
Many of them even invested their property in India stock, 

20 merely that they might be better able to annoy the man 
whose firmness had set bounds to their rapacity. Lying 
newspapers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him; 
and the temper of the public mind was then such, that 
these arts, which under ordinary circumstances, would 

25 have been ineffectual against truth and merit, produced 
an extraordinary impression. 

The great events which had taken place in India had 
called into existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom 
their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These per- 

30 sons had generally sprung from families neither ancient 
nor opulent; they had generally been sent at an early age 
to the East; and they had there acquired large fortunes, 
which they had brought back to their native land. It 



LORD CLIVE 87 

was natural that, not having had much opportunity of 
mixing with the best society, they should exhibit some of 
the awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. 
It was natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, they 
should have acquired some tastes and habits surprising, 5 
if not disgusting, to persons who never had quitted 
Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great con- 
sideration in the East, they should not be disposed to sink 
into obscurity at home; and as they had money, and had 
not birth or high connection, it was natural that they 10 
should display a little obtrusively the single advantage 
which they possessed. Wherever they settled there was a 
kind of feud between them and the old nobility and gentry, 
similar to that which raged in France between the farmer- 
general and the marquis. This enmity to the aristocracy 15 
long continued to distinguish the servants of the Company. 
More than twenty years after the time of which we are now 
speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins 
might be reckoned "the East Indians almost to a man, 
who cannot bear to find that their present importance 20 
does not bear a proportion to their wealth." 

The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of 
men. Some of them had in the East displayed eminent 
talents, and rendered great services to the state; but at 
home their talents were not shown to advantage, and 25 
their services were little known. That they had sprung 
from obscurity, that they had acquired great wealth, that 
they had exhibited it insolently, that they spent it ex- 
travagantly, that they raised the price of every thing in 
their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs, 30 
that their liveries outshone those of dukes, that their 
coaches were finer than thafr of the Lord Mayor, that the 
examples of their large and ill-governed households 



88 LORD CLIVE 

corrupted half the servants in the country, that some of 
them, with all their magnificence, could not catch the 
tone of good society, but, in spite of the stud and the 
crowd of menials, of the plate and the Dresden china, of 
5 the venison and the Burgundy, were still low men; these 
were things which excited, both in the class from which 
they had sprung and in the class into which they at- 
tempted to force themselves, the bitter aversion which 
is the effect of mingled envy and contempt. But when 

10 it was also rumoured that the fortune which had enabled 
its possessor to eclipse the Lord-Lieutenant on the race- 
ground, or to carry the county against the head of a house 
as old as Domesday Book, had been accumulated by 
violating public faith, by deposing legitimate princes, by 

15 reducing whole provinces to beggary, all the higher and 
better as well as all the low and evil parts of human 
nature were stirred against the wretch who had obtained 
by guilt and dishonour the riches which he now lavished 
with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate 

20 Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against 
which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, 
and of those crimes which have thrown the deepest gloom 
over tragedy, of Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain 
and Richard the Third. A tempest of execration and 

25 derision, such as can be compared only to that outbreak 
of public feeling against the Puritans which took place 
at the time of the Restoration, burst on the servants of 
the Company. The humane man was horror-struck at 
the way in which they had got their money, the thrifty 

30 man at the way in which they spent it. The dilettante 
sneered at their want of taste. The maccaroni black- 
balled them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most unlike 
in sentiment and style, Methodists and libertines, phi- 



LORD CLIVE 89 

losophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side. 
It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of about 
thirty years, the whole lighter literature of England was 
coloured by the feelings which we have described. Foote 
brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian chief, dissolute, 5 
ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the humble 
friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy, yet child- 
ishly eager to be numbered among them, squandering his 
wealth on pandars and flatterers, tricking out his chair- 
men with the most costly hot-house flowers, and astounding 10 
the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires. 
Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a plain 
country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of one 
of its members to sudden opulence, and exciting derision 
by an awkward mimicry of the manners of the great. 15 
Cowper, in that lofty expostulation which glows with the 
very spirit of the Hebrew, poets, placed the oppression of 
India foremost in the list of those national crimes for 
which God had punished England with years of disastrous 
war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the loss 20 
of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers will 
take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circu- 
lating libraries for some novel published sixty years ago, 
the chance is that the villain or sub- villain of the story will 
prove to be a savage old Nabob, with an immense fortune, 25 
a tawny complexion, a bad liver, and a worse heart. 

Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the 
country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was 
eminently the Nabob, the ablest, the most celebrated, 
the highest in rank, the highest in fortune, of all the fra- 30 
ternity. His wealth was exhibited in a manner which 
could not fail to excite odium. He lived with great mag- 
nificence in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in 



90 LORD CLIVE 

Shropshire and another at Claremont. His parliamentary 
influence might vie with that of the greatest families. But 
in all this splendour and power envy found something to 
sneer at. On some of his relations wealth and dignity 
5 seem to have sat as awkwardly as on Mackenzie's Margery 
Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with all his great quali- 
ties, free from those weaknesses which the satirists of that 
age represented as characteristic of his whole class. In 
the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He 

10 was constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his 
uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and 
was content with the plainest fare. But when he was 
no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this Spartan 
temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. 

15 Though his person was ungraceful, and though his harsh 
features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness only by their 
stern, dauntless, and commanding expression, he was fond 
of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe 
with absurd profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a 

20 letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in which Clive orders 
"two hundred shirts, the best and finest that can be got 
for love or money." A few follies of this description, 
grossly exaggerated by report, produced an unfavourable 
impression on the public mind. But this was not the 

25 worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were 
pure inventions, were circulated respecting his conduct 
in the East. He had to bear the whole odium, not only 
of those bad acts to which he had once or twice stooped, 
but of all the bad acts of all the English in India, of bad 

30 acts committed when he was absent, nay, of bad acts 
which he had manfully opposed and severely punished. 
The very abuses against which he had waged an honest, 
resolute, and successful war, were laid to his account. 



LORD CLIVE 91 

He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the 
vices and weaknesses which the public, with or without 
reason, ascribed to the English adventurers in Asia. We 
have ourselves heard old men, who knew nothing of his 
history, but who still retained the prejudices conceived in 5 
their youth, talk of him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson 
always held this language. Brown, whom Clive employed 
to lay out his pleasure grounds, was amazed to see in the 
house of his noble employer a chest which had once been 
filled with gold from the treasury of Moorshedabad, and 10 
could not understand how the conscience of the criminal 
could suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his 
bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey looked with mys- 
terious horror on the stately house which was rising at 
Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had 15 
ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out 
the devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. 
Among the gaping clowns who drank in this frightful 
story was a worthless ugly lad of the name of Hunter, 
since widely known as William Huntington, S.S.; and the 20 
superstition which was strangely mingled with the knavery 
of that remarkable impostor seems to have derived no 
small nutriment from the tales which he heard of the life 
and character of Clive. 

In the mean time, the impulse which Clive had given to 25 
the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming 
fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great extent 
abandoned; the abuses which he had suppressed began 
to revive; and at length the evils which a bad government 
had engendered were aggravated by one of those fearful 30 
visitations which the best government cannot avert. In 
the summer of 1770, the rains failed; the earth was parched 
up; the tanks were empty; the rivers shrank within their 



92 LORD CLIVE 

beds; and a famine, such as is known only in countries where 
every household depends for support on its own little patch 
of cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with 
misery and death. Tender and delicate women, whose 
5 veils had never been lifted before the public gaze, came 
forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy 
had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on 
the earth before the passers-by, and, with loud wailings, 
implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogley 

10 every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the 
porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The 
very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying 
and the dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not 
energy enough to bear the bodies of their kindred to the 

15 funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away 
the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains in 
the face of day. The extent of the mortality was never 
ascertained; but it was popularly reckoned by millions. 
This melancholy intelligence added to the excitement 

20 which already prevailed in England on Indian subjects. 
The proprietors of East India stock were uneasy about 
their dividends. All men of common humanity were 
touched by the calamities of our unhappy subjects; and 
indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It 

25 was rumoured that the Company's servants had created 
the famine by engrossing all the rice of the country; that 
they had sold grain for eight, ten, twelve times the price 
at which they had bought it; that one English functionary 
who, the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, 

30 had, during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand 
pounds to London. These charges we believe to have 
been unfounded. That servants of the Company had 
ventured, since dive's departure, to deal in rice, is prob- 



LORD CLIVE 93 

able. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained 
by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for 
thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil 
which physical causes sufficiently explain. The outcry 
which was raised against them on this occasion was, we 5 
suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of 
dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen and 
judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, 
on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud and so gen- 
eral that it appears to have imposed even on an intellect 10 
raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of Adam 
Smith. What was still more extraordinary, these unhappy 
events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. 
He had been some years in England when the famine took 
place. None of his acts had the smallest tendency to 15 
produce such a calamity. If the servants of the Com- 
pany had traded in rice, they had done so in direct con- 
travention of the rule which he had laid down, and, 
while in power, had resolutely enforced. But, in the 
eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Na- 20 
bob, the Anglo-Indian character personified; and, while 
he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held 
responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal. 
Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention 
on our Eastern possessions. Since the death of George 25 
the Second, a rapid succession of weak administrations, 
each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the 
Court, had held the semblance of power. Intrigues in 
the palace, riots in the capital, and insurrectionary 
movements in the American colonies, had left the ad- 30 
visers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian politics. 
When they did interfere, their interference was feeble 
and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short 



94 LORD CLIVE 

period of his ascendency in the councils of George the 
Third, had meditated a bold attack on the Company. 
But his plans were rendered abortive by the strange 
malady which about that time began to overcloud his 
5 splendid genius. 

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament 
could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The Govern- 
ment was stronger than any which had held power since 
the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connec- 

10 tion in 1761. No pressing question of domestic or Euro- 
pean policy required the attention of public men. There 
was a short and delusive lull between two tempests. The 
excitement produced by the Middlesex election was over; 
the discontents of America did not yet threaten civil war; 

15 the financial difficulties of the Company brought on a 
crisis; the Ministers were forced to take up the subject; 
and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, 
now broke at once on the head of Clive. 

His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He 

20 was hated throughout the country, hated at the India 
House, hated, above all, by those wealthy and powerful 
servants of the Company, whose rapacity and tyranny 
he had withstood. He had to bear the double odium of 
his bad and of his good actions, of every Indian abuse 

25 and of every Indian reform. The state of the political 
world was such that he could count on the support of no 
powerful connection. The party to which he had belonged, 
that of George Grenville, had been hostile to the Govern- 
ment, and yet had never cordially united with the other 

30 sections of the Opposition, with the little band which 
still followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham, or with the 
large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham 
was the acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now 



LORD CLIVE 95 

dead; his followers were scattered; and dive, unconnected 
with any of the powerful factions which divided the Parlia- 
ment, could reckon only on the votes of those members 
who were returned by himself. His enemies, particularly 
those who were the enemies of his virtues, were unscrupu- 5 
lous, ferocious, implacable. Their malevolence aimed 
at nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame and for- 
tune. They wished to see him expelled from Parlia- 
ment, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate 
confiscated; and it may be doubted whether even such 10 
a result as this would have quenched their thirst for 
revenge. 

dive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military 
tactics. Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with 
every thing at stake, he did not even deign to stand on the 15 
defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the attack. At 
an early stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he rose, 
and in a long and elaborate speech vindicated himself from 
a large part of the accusations which had been brought 
against him. He is said to have produced a great impres- 20 
sion on his audience. Lord Chatham, who, now the ghost 
of his former self, loved to haunt the scene of his glory, 
was that night under the gallery of the House of Commons, 
and declared that he had never heard a finer speech. It 
was subsequently printed under dive's direction, and, 25 
when the fullest allowance has been made for the assist- 
ance which he may have obtained from literary friends, 
proves him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and 
a manly spirit, but talents both for disquisition and dec- 
lamation which assiduous culture might have improved 30 
into the highest excellence. He confined his defence on this 
occasion to the measures of his last administration, and 
succeeded so far that his enemies thenceforth thought it 



06 LORD CLIVE 

expedient to direct their attacks chiefly against the earlier 
part of his life. 

The earlier part- of his life unfortunately presented some 
assailable points to their hostility. A committee was 
5 chosen by ballot to inquire into the affairs of India; and 
by this committee the whole history of that great revolu- 
tion which threw down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer 
Jafiier was sifted with malignant care. Clive was sub- 
jected to the most unsparing examination and cross- 

10 examination, and afterwards bitterly complained that 
he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated like a sheep- 
stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his replies 
would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature 
were the frauds to which, in the course of his Eastern 

15 negotiations, he had sometimes descended. He avowed 
the arts which he had employed to deceive Omichund, 
and resolutely said that he was not ashamed of them, 
and that, in the same circumstances, he would again 
act in the same manner. He admitted that he had re- 

20 ceived immense sums from Meer Jafiier; but he denied 
that, in doing so, he had violated any obligation of 
morality or honour. He laid claim, on the contrary, and 
not without some reason, to the praise of eminent dis- 
interestedness. He described in vivid language the situ- 

25 ation in which his victory had placed him; a great prince 
dependent on his pleasure; an opulent city afraid of being 
given up to plunder; wealthy bankers bidding against 
each other for his smiles; vaults piled with gold and jewels 
thrown open to him alone. "By God, Mr. Chairman," 

30 he exclaimed, "at this moment I stand astonished at my 
own moderation." 

The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose 
before it had been completed. It was continued in the 



LORD CLIVE 97 

following session. When at length the committee had 
concluded its labours, enlightened and impartial men had 
little difficulty in making up their minds as to the result. 
It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which 
it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the author- 5 
ity of all the most sacred laws which regulate the inter- 
course of individuals and of states. But it was equally 
clear that he had displayed great talents, and even great 
virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his 
country and to the people of India; and that it was in truth 10 
not for his dealings with Meer Jaffier nor for the fraud 
which he had practised on Omichund, but for his determined 
resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was now called 
in question. 

Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The 15 
greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge 
of the slightest transgression. If a man has sold beer on 
Sunday morning, it is no defence that he has saved the life 
of a fellow-creature at the risk of his own. If he has har- 
nessed a Newfoundland dog to his little child's carriage, 20 
it is no defence that he was wounded at Waterloo. But 
it is not in this way that we ought to deal with men, who, 
raised far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far more 
than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more than or- 
dinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be judged 2 5 
by their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. 
Their bad actions ought not, indeed, to be called good; 
but their good and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed; 
and, if on the whole the good preponderate, the sentence 
ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approba- 30 
tion. Not a single great ruler in history can be absolved 
by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two un- 
justifiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice 



98 LORD CLIVE 

the deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Hol- 
land, his great descendant the deliverer of England, Mur- 
ray the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry 
the Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how 
5 would the best of them pass such a scrutiny? History 
takes wider views; and the best tribunal for great political 
cases is the tribunal which anticipates the verdict of 
history. 

Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in 

10 Clive's case. They could not pronounce him blameless; 
but they were not disposed to abandon him to that low- 
minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and 
were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though 
not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to 

15 extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in 
progress, Clive, who had some years before been created 
a Knight of the Bath, was installed with great pomp in 
Henry the Seventh's Chapel. He was soon after ap- 
pointed Lord-Lieutenant of Shropshire. When he kissed 

20 hands, George the Third, who had always been partial 
to him, admitted him to a private audience, talked to 
him half an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly 
affected when the persecuted general spoke of his services 
and of the way in which they had been requited. 

25 At length the charges came in a definite form before the 
House of Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the commit- 
tee, a man of wit, fashion, and honour, an agreeable dra- 
matic writer, an officer whose courage was never questioned 
and whose skill was at that time highly esteemed, appeared 

30 as the accuser. The members of the administration took 
different sides; for in that age all questions were open 
questions, except such as were brought forward by the 
Government, or such as implied some censure on the 



LORD CLIVE 99 

Government. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, was among 
the assailants. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, 
strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with 
extraordinary force of argument and language. It is 
a curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow 5 
was the most conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, 
while Wedderburne was among the most unrelenting per- 
secutors of that great though not faultless statesman. 
Clive spoke in his own defence at less length and with less 
art than in the preceding year, but with much energy 10 
and pathos. He recounted his great actions and his 
wrongs; and, after bidding his hearers remember that they 
were about to decide not only on his honour but on their 
own, he retired from the House. 

The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the 15 
army of the State belong to the State alone,, and that it 
is illegal in the servants of the State to appropriate such 
acquisitions to themselves. They resolved that this whole- 
some rule appeared to have been systematically violated 
by the English functionaries in Bengal. On a subsequent 20 
day they went a step farther, and resolved that Clive had, 
by means of the power which he possessed as commander 
of the British forces in India, obtained large sums from 
Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They had 
voted the major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism; but 25 
they shrank from drawing the logical conclusion. When it 
was moved that Lord Clive had abused his powers, and set 
an evil example to the servants of the public, the previous 
question was put and carried. At length, long after the 
sun had risen on an animated debate, Wedderburne 30 
moved that Lord Clive had at the same time rendered 
great and meritorious services to his country; and this 
motion passed without a division. 



ioo LORD CLIVE 

The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on 
the whole, honourable to the justice, moderation, and dis- 
cernment of the Commons. They had indeed no great 
temptation to do wrong. They would have been very 
5 bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson 
or against Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive 
was not a party question; and the House accordingly 
acted with the good sense and good feeling which may 
always be expected from an assembly of English gentle- 

10 men, not blinded by faction. 

The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British 
Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a 
foil. The wretched government of Louis the Fifteenth 
had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every French- 

15 man who had served his country with distinction in the 
East. Labpurdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, 
after years of suffering, left it only to die. Dupleix, 
stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by 
humiliating attendance in antechambers, sank into an 

20 obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common place 
of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons 
of England, on the other hand, treated their living captain 
with that discriminating justice which is seldom shown 
except to the dead. They laid down sound general prin- 

25 ciples; they delicately pointed out where he had deviated 
from those principles; and they tempered the gentle cen- 
sure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, 
always partial to England, and always eager to expose 
the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, 

30 at this time, to have meditated a history of the conquest 
of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr. Moore when 
that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedder- 
burne took great interest in the matter, and pressed Clive 



LORD CLIVE ior 

to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into 
execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have 
produced a book containing much lively and picturesque 
narrative, many just and humane sentiments poignantly 
expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the 5 
Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic 
missionaries, and much sublime theo-philanthropy, stolen 
from the New Testament, and put into the mouths of 
virtuous and philosophical Brahmins. 

Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune 10 
and his honours. He was surrounded by attached friends 
and relations; and he had not yet passed the season of 
vigorous bodily anU mental exertion. But clouds had 
long been gathering over his mind, and now settled on it 
in thick darkness. From early youth he had been subject 15 
to fits of that strange melancholy " which re joice th exceed- 
ingly and is glad when it can find the grave." While still 
a writer at Madras, he had twice attempted to destroy 
himself. Business and prosperity had produced a salutary 
effect on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by 20 
great affairs, in England, while wealth and rank had still 
the charm of novelty, he had borne up against his consti- 
tutional misery. But he had now nothing to do, and noth- 
ing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation 
drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. 25 
The malignity with which his enemies had pursued him, 
the indignity with which he had been treated by the com- 
mittee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House 
of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was 
regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as a cruel 30 
and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate and depress 
him. In the mean time, his temper was tried by acute 
physical suffering. During his long residence in tropical 



102 LORD CLIVE 

climates, he had contracted several painful distempers. 
In order to obtain ease he called in the help of opium; and 
he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous ally. To 
the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed through 
5 the gloom. It is said that he would sometimes, after sit- 
ting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the dis- 
cussion of some great question, would display in full 
vigour all the talents of the soldier and the statesman, 
and would then sink back into his melancholy repose. 

10 The disputes with America had now become so serious 
that an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable; and the 
Ministers were desirous to avail themselves of the services 
of Clive. Had he still been what he was when he raised the 
siege of Patna, and annihilated the Dutch army and navy 

15 at the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that 
the resistance of the Colonists would have been put down, 
and that the inevitable separation would have been de- 
ferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong 
mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On 

20 the twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his 

own hand. He had just completed his forty-ninth year. 

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the 

vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices; and 

some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims 

25 both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe 
the mournful event to the just vengeance of God, and to 
the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different 
feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind 
ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded 

30 honour, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies. 

Clive committed great faults; and we have not at- 
tempted to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed 
against his merits, and viewed in connection with his 



LORD CLIVE 103 

temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of his 
right to an honourable place in the estimation of pos- 
terity. 

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the 
English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his country- 5 
men were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were 
revered as a people formed for victory and command. 
His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. With the 
defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental 
triumphs which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must 10 
we forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he 
approved himself ripe for military command. This is a 
rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, 
Conde, and Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a 
still earlier age; but those princes were surrounded by 15 
veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions 
must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, 
and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet 
more experience than any of those who served under him. 
He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form 20 
his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an 
equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, 
was Napoleon Bonaparte. 

From Clive's second visit to India dates the political 
ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity 25 
and resolution realised, in the course of a few months, more 
than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the 
imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated 
territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of 
subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the 30 
most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils 
ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, 
and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tar- 



104 LORD CLIVE 

peian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus 
and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splen- 
dour of the exploits which the young English adventurer 
achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to 
5 one half of a Roman legion. 

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the 
administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed 
in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to 
which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any 

10 means, in the shortest possible time. He first made 
dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of 
oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he 
manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splen- 
did fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us 

15 to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days com- 
pels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. 
If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has 
been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, 
elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter 

20 than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang of public 
robbers which formerly spread terror through the whole 
plain of Bengal has succeeded a body of functionaries not 
more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than 
by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we 

25 now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, 
after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing 
kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a 
land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope 
of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due 

30 to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. 
But it is found in a better list, in the list of those who have 
done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. 
To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same 



LORD CLIVE 105 

rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to 
the reformer a share of that veneration with which France 
cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest 
generations of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of 
Lord William Bentinck. 



NOTES 

SO much has been written in recent years about the teaching 
of English in secondary schools, that few if any suggestions 
about the handling of this essay seem to be called for. The 
only suggestions that the writer feels ought to be made are 
perhaps required by the peculiar nature of Macaulay's subject 
and style. Nothing in the teaching of the essay, it seems almost 
too obvious to say, should be allowed to interfere with the 
student's natural interest in the story of Clive's life. In this 
case, however, there are unusual temptations. It has been 
necessary, in order to explain Macaulay's abundant allusions 
and illustrations, to give in the notes a good deal of information 
that does not bear very directly on the story of Clive. But 
to make the acquisition of this information the chief part of 
the student's work is to defeat the very purpose for which 
the study of literature in schools should be carried on. 

Whether the introductory matter should be read before or 
after the text is a question on which there is room for some 
difference of opinion. In the present instance, however, it 
will probably be found that the essay will be read with less 
difficulty and with greater intelligence if the brief sketch of 
Indian history is read first. For the same reason it will be 
found desirable to have pupils constantly consult the map for 
names of places in India. 

No full analysis of Macaulay's style has been attempted in 
the Introduction, chiefly because, in the writer's judgment, it 
is much better to let the student first draw his own conclusions 
about details of style, than to give him conclusions ready made. 
To help him to reach opinions for himself, however, it will be 
found advisable to have him examine a number of paragraphs 
in the essay with a view to answering such question as the fol- 
lowing: Are Macaulay's sentences, in the paragraphs you have 
examined, generally long or short, or neither? Have you had 

107 



108 NOTES 

any difficulty in grasping the meaning of the long sentences? 
Do you find much variety in the length of sentences? Do you 
find any purpose served or advantage gained by the grouping 
or arrangement of long and short sentences? Do you find many 
sentences that are wholly or largely periodic in structure? In 
what different ways does Macaulay make sentences periodic? 
Do you find many instances of parallel structure in phrases? 
in clauses? in sentences? Do you find many balanced sentences? 
Do these sentences usually express a contrast? Do you find 
much variety in the structure of sentences? Do all of Macau- 
lay's paragraphs seem to you to be well constructed? Do they 
have unity? Does the thought move easily from sentence to 
sentence? How is this transition between sentences chiefly 
accomplished? By transitional words and phrases? By refer- 
ence words? By repeating words or phrases from the preceding 
sentence? By beginning consecutive sentences with the same 
expression, or by retaining the same subject? Do you find any 
instances of climax in the arrangement of sentences in the para- 
graph? Do you find many topic sentences? In cases where 
you do not find them, do they seem to be needed? Do you 
find many summary sentences? Of what advantage is each to 
the paragraph in which it occurs? 

3. 5. Montezuma II, King of Mexico, was imprisoned, as 
perhaps some schoolboys need to be reminded, by Hernando 
Cortes in 15 18. For a full account of the incident, see Pres- 
cott's Conquest of Mexico. 

3. 6. Atahualpa, the last Inca of Peru, was strangled by 
order of the Spanish invader, Pizarro. The story is told in 
Prescott's Conquest of Peru. 

3. 8. The Battle of Buxar: In 1764 Major Munro defeated 
the combined forces of the Nabob of Oude and Meer Cossim, 
the Nabob of Bengal. This victory gave the English complete 
control of the valley of the Ganges. Cf. note, p. 83, 1. n. 

3. 9. The massacre of Patna: In 1763, through the miscon- 
duct of an English official at Patna, war broke out between the 
English and Meer Cossim, whom they had placed upon the 
throne of Bengal. The Nabob was defeated and fled to Oude, 
but his English prisoners at Patna, 148 in number, were mas- 
sacred, doubtless according to his instructions, by Walter Rein- 



NOTES 109 

hardt, a German soldier of fortune, then in his service. See 

P- 73, 1. 2 5- 

3. 10. Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude (1754 to 1775). He is 
not to be confused with Surajah Dowlah, who is frequently 
mentioned later in the essay. See p. 38, 1. 31. 

3. 10. Oude, Travancore: To get a clear understanding of 
this narrative, the student should not fail to consult the map 
whenever he comes upon unfamiliar names of places. 

3. n. Holkar: the name of a dynasty of Hindoo Mahratta 
chiefs in Central India. It is possible that Macaulay here 
means the founder of the dynasty, who was active about the 
middle of the eighteenth century, but more likely that he has 
in mind Jaswint Rao Holkar, who stubbornly opposed the Eng- 
lish at the beginning of the nineteenth century and defeated 
their armies more than once. 

3. 11. The victories of Cortes: Macaulay was apparently not 
well informed about the Mexicans. They were more highly 
civilized than he thought. 

3. 17. Harquebusier : a soldier armed with a harquebus, or 
arquebus, a primitive musket used in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. 

4. 4. Ferdinand the Catholic: Ferdinand V, King of Aragon 
(1456-1576), who married Isabella, Queen of Castile. Why are 
these sovereigns of especial interest to American readers? 

4. 6. The Great Captain: Gonsalvo Hernandez de Cordova, 
a distinguished Spanish general of the time of Ferdinand. The 
title, The Great Captain, was given him for his services in 
regaining Naples from the French. 

4. 14. Mr. Mill's book: a History of British India published 
in 181 7-18 by James Mill, an English philosopher and historian 
whose fame has been overshadowed by that Of his more dis- 
tinguished son, John Stuart Mill. 

4. 17. Orme: Robert Orme (1 728-1801) wrote a History of 
the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 
the year 1745, published in 1763 and 1778. He lived in India 
during much of the time that Clive was there, knew Clive inti- 
mately, and, as a member of the council at Madras in 1756, 
commended the appointment of Clive to command the expedi- 
tion to Calcutta. 

4. 27. Sir John Malcolm, whose Life of Clive Macaulay is 



no NOTES 

ostensibly reviewing, was a soldier and diplomatist of some 
prominence in his day. He was in the service of the East India 
Company for many years, and was made Governor of Bombay 
in 1827. 

4. 28. Lord Powis: Lord Clive's eldest son, Edward, who 
had married the daughter of the former Earl of Powis, was 
made Earl of Powis in 1804. He died in 1839. 

5. 9. Whose love passes the love of biographers: the word- 
ing is taken from David's lament over Jonathan, 2 Sam. i. 26. 
Find other instances of the influence of the English Bible on 
Macaulay's style. 

5. 12. The severe judgment of Mr. Mill: Mill accuses Clive 
of too much attention to self-interest and of lack of far-sighted 
statesmanship. But he acknowledges his boldness and skill, 
and virtually vindicates his conduct. He says that Clive 
" appears not in any instance to have sacrificed what he regarded 
as their (the Company's) interests to his own," and that " it 
would have required an extraordinary man to have acted, 
in that most trying situation in which he was placed, with 
greater disinterest than he displayed." {Hist, of Brit. India, 
III, 5 n.) 

5. 23. Shropshire: In what part of England? 

5. 28. Avocations: Distinguish between avocation and voca- 
tion. 

6. 17. Predatory: Meaning? Give the meaning of the sen- 
tence in simpler English. 

6. 22. Character: What word would writers of the present 
day use instead? 

6. 30. Writership: clerkship. 

6. 31. East India Company: see Introduction, p. 26. 

7. 1. East Endia College: at Haleybury, Herfordshire. The 
school was established by the East India Company to prepare 
young men for the Company's service. 

7. 2. Presidencies: formerly the three main political divi- 
sions of India, the presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. 
Originally, in India, the word was applied to the office of the 
head of a factory or trading-post. As factories gradually became 
centers of government, " presidency " came to mean the prov- 
ince governed. 

7. 28. The prophet's gourd: see Jonah iv. 6-10. 



NOTES in 

8. 5. The heat of the climate. To get a better idea of the 
effect of the climate on Europeans, read some of Kipling's 
stories, e.g., The End of the Passage, or With the Main Guard. 

8. 7. The voyage . . . performed within three months: How 
long does it take now to go from England to India? What is 
the usual route? 

8. 16. Precinct: In what sense is the word used here? 

8. 24. The Great Mogul: see Introduction, p. 23. 

10. 11. Twice ... he attempted to destroy himself: 
Macaulay's statement, though not literally inconsistent with 
other accounts of the incident, is misleading. One cannot 
help feeling that his fondness for the balanced sentence has led 
him to sacrifice exactness to rhetorical effect. A reader gets 
the impression that Clive attempted his own life on two separate 
occasions. Sir Charles Wilson's account of the story is as fol- 
lows: "During this period he is said, either in a fit of despair 
or of low spirits, to have attempted suicide. A companion 
coming into his room on one occasion, was requested to take 
up a pistol and fire it out of the window. He did so; whereupon 
Clive, who was in one of his gloomy moods, sprang up and 
exclaimed: ' Well, I am reserved for something! I have twice 
snapped that pistol at my own head.' " 

10. 15. Wallenstein: a great general in the service of the 
Emperor Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years War. 

10. 22. The war of the Austrian succession (1 740-1 748): On 
the death of the Emperor Charles VI, in 1740, the succession 
of his daughter Maria Theresa, to the throne of Austria was 
disputed. The Elector of Bavaria, who claimed the throne, 
was supportd by France, Spain, and Prussia. England and 
Holland supported Maria Theresa. In India and America the 
war was simply a struggle between France and England for 
colonial possessions. In American history it is generally known 
as King George's war. 

10. 24. The House of Bourbon: the royal family of France 
since 1589. Since 1700 it has included also the royal family 
of Spain. 

10. 26. More than a match on the sea for all the nations of 
the world: Would this statement be true of England's present 
strength on the sea? 

10. 30. Labourdonnais : see also p. 100, 1. 16. 



112 NOTES 

10. 31. Mauritius and Reunion, of which Labourdonnais 
was also governor, are islands in the Indian Ocean, east of 
Madagascar. 

11. 7. Parole: "a pledge of honour given by a prisoner of 
war that he will not try to escape, if allowed to go about at 
liberty, or will return to custody at a stated time, or will not 
take up arms against his captors within a stated period." 

11. 12. Dupleix: see also p. 36, 1. 5, and p. 100, 1. 17. 

11. 29. Engagements: In what sense is the word used? Into 
what engagements had the inhabitants entered? 

12. 5. Ensign: formerly a commissioned office of the lowest 
grade in the British infantry. Equivalent to what rank in the 
American army? 

12. 8. A desperate duel: Clive accused an ensign in the 
Company's service of cheating in a game of cards, and refused 
to pay what he had lost. In the duel, which immediately fol- 
lowed, " Clive fired and missed his opponent, who walking up 
to him held the pistol to his head and bade him ask for his 
life. After some hesitation he complied, but when further 
pressed to withdraw his remarks and promise payment, he 
replied, ' Fire and be damned! I said you cheated; I say so 
still, and I will never pay you.' The astonished ensign, finding 
threats useless, called him a madman, and flung his pistol away." 
— Wilson's Life of Clive. This story furnished the chief inci- 
dent in Browning's dramatic poem, Clive, which all students of 
this essay should read. 

12. 18. Peace had been concluded: the Peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle, 1748, by which the English and French restored the 
conquests they had made. 

12. 30. The English and French Companies: At the begin- 
ning of this struggle the French in India were much stronger than 
the English; their settlements were more extensive, and their 
military force and their influence were greater. 

12. S3- Tamerlane, Baber, Moguls: see Introduction, pp. 
xxxi and xxxii. 

13. 10. Versailles: a suburb of Paris, where Louis XIV built 
a magnificent palace, since then the residence of the kings and 
emperors of France. 

14. 2. Aurungzebe: see Introduction, p. xxxiii. 

14. 10. Theodosius: Theodosius the Great, the last emperor 



NOTES 113 

to rule over the united Roman Empire (379-395, a.d.). After 
his death the Empire was rapidly broken up. 

14. 13. Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, became King 
of the Franks in 768 a.d. In the year 800 he was crowned 
Emperor of Rome. His domain included, besides France, much 
of what is now Germany and Italy, and parts of Austria and 
Spain. The kings of his line are called Carlovingians. 

14. 19. Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, and Charles the 
Simple ruled the empire of the Franks from 840 to 929. 

14. 24. The pirates of the Northern Sea: the Northmen or 
Normans, who early in the tenth century with the consent of 
Charles the Simple established themselves in northern France, 
thereafter called Normandy. From here, a century and a half 
later, they invaded and conquered England. 

14. 28. The Gog or Magog of prophecy: Revelations xx. 8, 
Ezekiel xxxviii. and xxxix. The names are supposed to refer 
to the heathen nations of Asia. 

14. 30. Pannonian: a Roman province lying in what is now 
the southwestern part of Austria-Hungary. It was bounded 
on the north and east by the Danube. 

14. 31. Campania: A large district in southern Italy com- 
prising Naples and the surrounding country. 

15. 16. Bang: the dried leaves and capsules of the Indian 
hemp; the hashish of the Arabs. It is used in different forms 
in Oriental countries as a narcotic and intoxicant. 

15. 22. Roe: Sir Thomas Roe, who was sent out by James I 
in 16 1 5 as ambassador to the Mogul Jahangir. He wrote a 
book giving an interesting account of the Mogul's court, at 
which he had spent more than three years. 

15. 22. Bernier: Francois Bernier, a learned French pl^si- 
cian and traveller — a schoolfellow of Moliere's — spent twelve 
years at the court of Aurungzebe as his physician. His Travels 
were published in 1670. 

15. 23. The Peacock Throne: built by the Emperor Shah 
Jehan (1628-1658) in his palace at Delhi. Estimates of its 
value range from five million to fifty million dollars. 

15. 23. Golconda: the name of a city and fortress, formerly 
also of a kingdom in southern India. The city is famous for 
the diamonds which were cut and polished there. 

15. 25. Mountain of Light: the Koh-i-noor. This famous 

9 



H4 NOTES 

diamond afterwards came into the possession of the East India 
Company which presented it to Queen Victoria. 

13. 27. Runjeet Sing: Lord of the Punjab in the early nine- 
teenth century. He died in 1839. 

15. 27. Hideous idol of Orissa: Jagannath, better known as 
the Juggernaut. See comment and illustration for Juggernaut 
in The Standard Dictionary. 

15. 32. Seiks, or Sikhs: a Hindu sect which in the eighteenth 
century gradually became a nation. 

I 5« 3 2 - Jauts or Jats: a Hindu tribe. 

17. 20. Cabul or Kabul: the name of a province as well 
as of the capital city of Afghanistan. 

17. 20. Chorasan: the northeastern province of Persia. 

17. 33. Burrampooter : the Brahmaputra. 

18. 1. Hydaspes: the ancient name of the Jhelum, a branch 
of the Indus. Near this river Alexander the Great defeated the 
native ruler Porus in 326 B.C. 

18. 1. Dictate terms of peace at the gates of Ava: at the close 
of the first Burmese war in 1826. Ava was the former capital 
of Burma. 

18. 2. Candahar: a city in southern Afghanistan. In the 
first Afghan war, which began in 1838, the English dethroned 
one ruler of Afghanistan, and put another on the throne. Their 
control of the country, however, was short-lived. 

18. 16. Saxe: Comte Maurice de Saxe, generally called Mar- 
shal Saxe, one of the most brilliant generals of France in the 
eighteenth century. He defeated the English at Fontenoy in 

1745- 

18. 16. Frederic: Frederic II, King of Prussia from 1740 to 
1786, known as Frederick the Great. He was a genius in the 
art of war. 

19. 2. Court of Delhi: Delhi was the capital of the Mogul 
Empire.. 

19. 11. Want: In which sense is the word used? 

20. 11. Sepoy: a native East Indian soldier as distinguished 
from a European soldier. The work is a corruption of sipahi, 
Hindustani for soldier. 

20. 16. Owes to the eloquence of Burke: Edmund Burke 
(1 729-1 797) was one of England's greatest statesmen and orators. 
The reference is to his speech on the payment of the Nabob 



NOTES 115 

of Arcot's debts. The Nabob owed, it was claimed, large sums 
to the East India Company's servants. It was proposed that 
these debts should be paid out of the revenues of the Carnatic. 
Burke opposed this plan on the ground that the debts were 
fraudulent or represented bribes offered to the Company's ser- 
vants for the assistance of the English in the Nabob's unprin- 
cipled schemes. See Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings, 
ed. Samuel M. Tucker, in Longmans' " English Classics." 

20. 28. Te Deum: an ancient Christian hymn named from 
its opening words " Te Deum laudamus," " We praise thee, O 
God," much used in the service of the church and on occasions 
of special thanksgiving. 

21. 27. The vain-glorious Frenchman: Macaulay's epithet is 
misleading. The acts which Macaulay attributes to Dupleix's 
vanity were doubtless due to his sagacity. He chose the best 
way of impressing the natives with a sense of his greatness and 
the greatness of the French. Macaulay recognizes this else- 
where; cf. p. 28, 1. 30, to p. 29, 1. 5. 

25. 6. The Tenth Legion: a legion in which Caesar placed 
especial confidence. It was famed for its devotion and courage. 

25. 6. The Old Guard: the senior division of the Imperial 
Guard, the flower of Napoleon's army. Only veterans who 
had served with distinction were admitted to it. 

25. 16. Mahrattas: see page 15, 1. 33, to p. 16, 1. 33. 

26. 6. Hosein the son of Ali: Ali, a cousin of Mohammed, 
had married Fatima, the prophet's favourite daughter. He 
became the fourth caliph, or head of the Mohammedan state. 
His claim to the throne, however, was opposed, and as a result 
the church was broken into two factions. Ali was murdered, 
and his eldest son, Hassan, abdicated and was afterwards poi- 
soned. Several years later Ali's younger son, Hosein, refused to 
take the oath of allegiance to the new caliph, Yezid, and was 
assassinated in the plain of Kerbela in the year 680. The fes- 
tival of which Macaulay speaks, called the Muharram from the 
month in which it occurred, was observed by the Shiah Mos- 
lems, the followers of Ali, as the anniversary of the death of 
Hosein. 

26. 9. Fatimites: descendants of Fatima, or their supporters. 
See preceding note. 

26. 12. The tyrant: Yezid. 



n6 NOTES 

26. 14. They had seen those lips pressed: that is, they had 
seen Mohammed kiss his little grandson, Hosein. 

26. 23. The garden of the Houris: the Mohammedan para- 
dise. Houris, according to the Moslem faith, are nymphs who 
are to be the companions of the faithful. 

26. 26. Drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang: evidently 
a half humorous imitation of Milton's 

" Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine." 

— Samson Agonistes, 1. 1670. 

30. 14. Captain Bobadil: a blustering, cowardly soldier, in 
Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. 

30. 22. Bussy: Charles- Joseph Patissier, Marquis de Bussy- 
Castelnau, was the ablest of the French officers in India. He was 
distinguished alike for his brilliant military exploits, and for his 
skill in dealing with the natives. For several years he was the 
virtual ruler at Hyderabad. See Malleson's History of the French 
in India. 

30. 24. At the court of that prince: at Hyderabad. 

31. 26. Crimps: persons who decoyed or kidnapped men for 
military or naval service. The East India Company obtained 
great numbers of young men in this way and shipped them to 
India. 

31. 26. Flash-houses: houses that received stolen goods and 
that were frequented by all sorts of disreputable people. 

32. 24. Clive embarked for England: in February, 1753, 
eight years after his arrival at Madras. 

34. 3. Jacobites: from " Jacobus," James. Adherents of 
James II after he was deposed in 1688, or of his male descendants; 
hence opponents of the House of Hanover. The last rebellion 
refers to an unsuccessful attempt, made in 1745, to put Charles 
Edward, known as the Young Pretender, a grandson of James II, 
upon the throne. A similar attempt in 1 715 in favour of his 
father, James, the Old Pretender, had likewise failed. 

34. 9. Prince Frederic: oldest son of George II and father 
of George III. He died in 1751. 

34. 17. Newcastle: Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of New- 
castle. He was made a secretary of state in 1724, and by aiding 
now one party and now another, he managed to keep himself 
in office for thirty-eight years. He became prime minister in 
1754. 



NOTES 117 

34. 20. Henry Fox: the first Lord Holland. He was the 
father of Charles James Fox, one of the most famous orators 
and statesmen of the latter part of the century. 

34. 22. First Lord of the Treasury: Newcastle. The prime 
minister is usually, though not necessarily, First Lord of the 
Treasury. 

34. 27. Returning: In England a man is " returned " to 
Parliament when elected even for the first time. A writ is 
issued by the clerk of the crown, to the sheriff of the county, 
and after the election the writ is sent back bearing the name of 
the candidate elected. Hence, " returned." 

34. 29. The Reform Act in 1832, besides extending the 
franchise, did away with the "rotten boroughs," which up to 
that time had continued to elect members to Parliament, although 
their population had dwindled or disappeared altogether. These 
boroughs were openly bought and sold. 

34. 32. Clive . . . was brought forward: In England a member 
of Parliament need not be a resident of the district for which 
he is elected. 

35. 8. Sir Robert Walpole: a great Whig leader, who for 
twenty-one years, from 1721 to 1742, was prime minister of 
England. He is said to have established the modern system 
of cabinet government. 

35. 29. The Duke of Cumberland: second son of George III. 
See note on p. 67, 1. 30. 

35. 32. The House rescinded the decision of the committee: 
that is, the House in its regular legislative capacity, reversed 
the decision it had reached when acting as a committee. 

37. 26. Castilians: inhabitants of the old kingdom of Castile 
in the northern and central part of Spain. Valencia: a province, 
formerly a Moorish kingdom, in eastern Spain, on the shore of 
the Mediterranean. 

38. 6. Factories: organizations of factors or agents engaged 
in trade, not in manufacturing: hence, trading stations. The 
principal English factories "consisted of merchants, senior and 
junior, who conducted the trade; factors, who ordered goods, 
inspected and despatched them; and writers, who were clerks 
and book-keepers. . . . From the senior merchants the members 
of council were chosen, and one of these last was selected as 
president of the factory." 



n8 NOTES 

38. 16. Chowringhee : a part of Calcutta occupied by govern- 
ment buildings and houses of wealthy merchants. 

40. 7. The governor . . . took refuge in the nearest ship: 
" From daylight on Sunday till late in the afternoon of Monday, 
the deserted garrison signalled to the ships for assistance. A 
few boats might have rescued all who remained, yet the governor 
and the commandant made no effort to save their countrymen. 
There is no more disgraceful incident in the history of the British 
Empire." — Wilson's Life of Clive. 

40. 30. It was the summer solstice: June 20, 1756. 

41. n. The story which Ugolino told: In the Inferno, Cantos 
XXXII and XXXIII, Dante sees Count Ugolino of Pisa and 
Archbishop Ruggieri imprisoned together in the sea of ever- 
lasting ice, the former gnawing forever at the skull of the latter. 
Ugolino tells the poet how he and his children were starved to 
death by Ruggieri. The children died first, and the father 
fondled their dead bodies until "hunger did what sorrow could 
not do." 

43. 5. And that Clive should be at the head of the land 
forces: This prompt decision, however, was followed by dis- 
putes between the council and certain officers, which delayed 
the departure of the fleet for two months. 

44. 14. War had commenced in Europe: the Seven Years 
War. France and Austria, aided by Sweden, Poland, and 
Russia, attempted to crush Frederic the Great of Prussia. Eng- 
land alone took the side of Prussia. That part of the conflict 
which took place in America is known as the French and Indian 
War. 

46. 24. He fell back in alarm: not, however, until after an 
engagement in which the English lost heavily. 
46. 28. Bussy: see p. 30, 1. 22, and note. 

46. 32. Chandernagore : Chandernagore is on the Hooghley, 
about twenty miles north of Calcutta. Here the French had 
built a strong fort, which was defended at this time by "five 
hundred Europeans and seven hundred blacks." The English 
ships, which fought at very close range, suffered severely. Every 
officer but one on Admiral Watson's flagship was either killed 
or wounded. 

47. 2. The success of the movements was rapid: The siege 
lasted ten days. The fort surrendered on March 23, 1757. 



NOTES 119 

50. 3. He forged Admiral Watson's name: Clive instructed 
his secretary to sign the Admiral's name. " When questioned 
by the Select Committee of Parliament he declared that to 
the best of his belief the Admiral gave Mr. Lushington leave to 
sign his name, but that he would have ordered his name to be 
attached whether he had consented or not." — Wilson's Life 
of Clive. 

50. 29. Before him lay a river: the Bhagirathi, the northern 
part of the Hooghley. 

51. 3. Clive declared his concurrence with the majority: 
" On the 21st Clive summoned a council of war to decide whether 
the English should attack at once or entrench themselves at 
Katwa. The question having been put, Clive, contrary to his 
usual practice, gave his own vote first. He voted for delay, and 
was supported by Kilpatrick and eleven others. A minority 
of seven, with Eyre Coote at their head, voted for an imme- 
diate attack." — Wilson's Life of Clive. 

51. 28. Furies: The furies or Eumenides, in classical mythol- 
ogy, were avenging goddesses. 

51. 30. The day broke: June 23, 1757. 

51. 2>3- Forty thousand infantry . . . cavalry . . . fifteen thou- 
sand: Clive's own estimate of the Nabob's army was 50,000. 
Orme puts the number at 68,000. 

52. 22. Scarcely any execution: During the cannonade the 
English were protected by a mud bank and ditch surrounding 
the grove in which they lay. 

55. 20. The unhappy man sank into idiocy: "Aminchand 
(Omichund) naturally was overwhelmed when Clive cooly con- 
fessed to the deception, but the current story that he lost his 
reason from the shock and died an imbecile is false. The old 
Calcutta records prove that after an interval he resumed busi- 
ness and engaged in several transactions with the English." 
— Oxford Student's History of India. 

56. 10. Machiavelli: Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), a cele- 
brated Florentine statesman and writer. Because of his work 
The Prince, a treatise on the principles of statecraft, his name 
has come to suggest what is deceptive and cold-blooded and 
unscrupulous in the policy of states or individuals. 

56. 11. Borgia: Caesar Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, was 
one of the worst of Italian princes. He mercilessly slaughtered 



120 NOTES 

his enemies, had his brother assassinated, and is supposed to 
have been an adept in the art of poisoning. He is the hero of 
Machiavelli's Prince. He died in 1507. 

57. 8. Yea, yea, and nay, nay: see James v. 12, and Matthew 

v. 37- 

57. 17. Rupees: The rupee is a silver coin, nominally worth 
fifty cents. On account of the depreciation in the value of 
silver it is now worth much less. 

58. 8. We altogether condemn it: Speaking in the House of 
Commons, Clive said that he looked upon Omichund as a "pub- 
lic enemy," and considered "every artifice that could deceive 
him to benot only defensible but just and proper." He always 
defended his action and declared that he was ready to do it a 
hundred times over. Sir Charles Wilson in his Life of Clive, 
says, " The sham treaty was a blunder no less than a crime, for 
it was unnecessary. ... All that can be said is that except in 
this one instance he appears to have been singularly straight- 
forward in his dealings with the natives, and that before he 
left Bengal he had succeeded in winning their implicit con- 
fidence." 

59. 4. Florin: originally a gold coin, first issued in Florence 
in 1252. The name has since been given to different gold and 
silver coins'. 

59. 5. Byzant: a gold coin first made in Byzantium, the old 
name of Constantinople. 

59. 6. The Venetians purchased the stuff, etc.: The Moham- 
medans who controlled both the caravan trade and the trade 
by the Red Sea brought the products of the Orient to the eastern 
Mediterranean ports and sold them to the Venetian merchants. 

59. 7. Clive walked between heaps of gold: see p. 96, 11. 24- 
31. According to some authorities the total amount that Clive 
received from Meer Jaffier was 188,000 pounds. 

59. 20. Rewards bestowed ... on Marlborough, etc.: After 
the battle of Blenheim (1704) the Emperor Joseph I gave the 
Duke of Marlborough the principality of Mindelheim in Bavaria. 
In 1798 Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, gave Nelson, as a reward 
for his services in the battle of the Nile, the estate of Bronte 
and the title of Duke of Bronte. After Wellington defeated 
the French at Vittoria in 181 3, the Spanish government made 
him Duke of Vittoria and gave him an estate in Spain. Does 



NOTES 121 

Macaulay meet the argument implied in these cases? Why 
does he say nothing more about them? 

60. 26. Louis the Eighteenth: Wellington's victory at Water- 
loo made the throne of France secure for Louis XVIII and the 
House of Bourbon. 

61. 16. Twenty lacs of rupees: A lac is 100,000. Twenty 
lacs of rupees would be equivalent to a million dollars. 

63. 1. Engagements: In what sense is the word used? 

63. 6. The tract lying to the north of the Carnatic: This 
tract was called the Northern Circars. See map. Colonel Forde 
showed unusual ability in the conduct of the expedition. He 
defeated the French army at Kondur, and, with a force inferior 
to the garrison opposed to him, he carried the strongly fortified 
town of Masulipatam by assault. "The storming of Masuli- 
patam," says Sir Charles Wilson, "is one of the most daring 
feats of arms on record. . . . And yet, strange to say, . . . though 
strongly recommended by Clive, the English commander received 
no mark of distinction from the Company or from the country 
he had served so well." — Life of Clive. 

65. 3. Quit-rent: strictly, a rent paid by a freeholder, where- 
by he was released from feudal service. Here the word means 
simply rent. Such an assignment of rent or revenues as Meer 
Jaffier made to Clive is called a jaghir. 

65. 10. This present we think Clive justified in accepting: 
Is Macaulay consistent in approving the acceptance of this gift 
and condemning the acceptance of Meer Jafher's first gift? 
Was the first gift a secret one? Did the Company at the time 
disapprove of it? The question is discussed in Wilson's Life 
of Clive, pp. 109, no. 

65. 29. Batavia: the capital of Java. What other East 
Indian possessions do the Dutch now have? 

66. 23. Ably seconded by Colonel Forde: The Dutch commo- 
dore had landed 1500 soldiers on the west bank of the Hooghley. 
" Forde hesitated to attack the troops of a friendly state without 
explicit instructions, and wrote to Clive that, if he had an order 
in Council, he could attack the Dutch with a fair chance of 
success. Clive was playing whist when the note arrived, and 
without rising from the table, replied in pencil, 'Dear Forde — 
Fight them immediately. I will send you the order in Council 
to-morrow.' " — Wilson's Life of Clive, p. 129. 



122 NOTES 

67. 7. Clive sailed for England: in February, 1760, a little 
more than four years after he arrived. He had found the Eng- 
lish almost driven from Bengal; he left them the masters of the 
province and the strongest power in India. 

67. 12. The Irish peerage: Clive was given the title of Baron 
Clive of Plassey. He never received an English title. An Irish 
peer is not a member of the House of Lords, and may sit in the 
House of Commons, as Clive actually did. 

67. 16. Pitt: William Pitt, the elder (1 708-1 778), known as 
the great Commoner, afterwards Earl of Chatham. 

67. 19. That memorable period: The year 1759 was a great 
year of victories for the English. In Europe they defeated the 
French army at Minden, and their navy off Cape Lagos and in 
Quiberon Bay. In America they captured Quebec. In India 
they defeated the Dutch in Bengal, and when the year was 
scarcely ended, they crushed the French power in the Carnatic. 

67. 23. The King of Prussia: Frederick the Great. See p. I 8, 

I. 16, and note. 

67. 23. There were then no reporters in the gallery: Until 
1 771 the proceedings of Parliament were not allowed to be 
published. Reporters' galleries were not erected until after the 
fire of 1834. 

67. 28. The death of Wolfe: Major-General James Wolfe was 
killed on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec, September 13, 
1759. Like Clive he was only thirty-two years old when he 
won his greatest victory. 

67. 30 The Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George 

II, had been defeated at Fontenoy and Lauffeld in the War of 
the Austrian Succession and at Hastenbeck in the Seven Years 
War. His only victory was at Culloden, where he defeated the 
Jacobites and treated them with such cruelty that he was after- 
wards called "The Butcher." 

67. 2>2>- Conway: General Henry Seymour Conway served in 
the Seven Years, at one time commanding the British forces in 
Germany under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Afterwards 
he was Secretary of State and commander-in-chief of the army. 

68. 2. Granby: John Manners, Marquis of Granby, served 
with distinction in the Seven Years War. Later he became 
commander-in-chief of the army. 

68. 4. Sackville: Lord George Sackville, afterwards Lord 



NOTES 123 

George Germain, commander of the English forces in Germany, 
was dismissed from the service for refusing to charge at the 
battle of Minden, where he was in command of the allied cav- 
alry. The "imputation most fatal" is, of course, that of cow- 
ardice. 

68. 7. Under the command of a foreign general: Prince 
Ferdinand of Brunswick, commanding the English, Hessian, 
and Hanoverian forces, defeated the French at Minden in 1759 
and at Warburg in 1760. 

69. 12. His purchases of land seem to have been made with 
that view: How could the purchase of land help his parliamen- 
tary interest? See note on p. 34, 1. 29. 

69. 21. George Grenville: Prime Minister from 1763 to 1765. 
It was his ministry that began the attempt to impose taxes on 
the American colonies. 

69. 22. That worthless demagogue Wilkes: Although John 
Wilkes was a demagogue and a profligate, he helped to bring 
about several important reforms. He 'was accused of libelling 
the King in his paper, the North Briton, and was arrested on a 
general, or blank warrant. The arrest resulted in the very 
important decision from the Chief Justice that general warrants 
were illegal. In 1768 Wilkes was elected to Parliament for 
Middlesex, but was expelled from the House. He was re-elected 
three times, and each time expelled. Finally in 1774, he was 
elected again, and was allowed to take his seat. This long 
struggle resulted in establishing the right of a constituency to 
choose its own representative. Wilkes also took an active part 
in obtaining for the people the right to make public the pro- 
ceedings of Parliament. 

69. 25. Horace Walpole, a son of Sir Robert Walpole, was 
a prominent literary and social figure in the middle and latter 
part of the eighteenth century. 

69. 28. The levee: the King's morning reception. 

69. 31. Your Majesty will have another vote: George III 
was building up a party of supporters in Parliament, known as 
the King's friends, by whose aid he hoped to regain for the 
crown much of the power which it had lost since the days of 
the Tudors. 

70. 8. Board of Control: a government board consisting of 
six members of the Privy Council, which had supreme authority 



124 



NOTES 



over the civil and military administrations of the Company. 
It was established in 1784 and existed until 1858. 

70. 11. The Court of Proprietors consisted of holders of the 
stock of the Company to the amount of 500 pounds. 

70. 17. A Westminster election: Macaulay probably has in 
mind the election of 1784. In that year, in order to defeat 
Charles James Fox, who was a candidate for Parliament for 
Westminster, the King and his ministers, of whom the younger 
Pitt was at the head, resorted to bribery and illegal voting. A 
great deal of excitement prevailed. Fox, although elected, was 
excluded from his seat by political trickery. He was then elected 
from another borough. A similar turbulent election had occurred 
in Westminster in 1689. 

70. 18. A Grampound election: Grampound was a borough in 
Cornwall in which several persons were convicted of bribery 
and corrupt practices in 181 9. 

71. 5. Residencies: A residency is the office of a representa- 
tive of the Governor-General at a native court. 

71. 6. Sudder courts: the Company's courts of highest civil 
and criminal jurisdiction. Englishmen had had the right of 
appeal from these courts to the supreme court at Calcutta. 
Macaulay while in India did away with this special privilege. 

71. 18. Leadenhall Street: the location of the India House. 

71. 21. Pigot: Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras. During 
the forty years of his residence in India he had amassed a for- 
tune of $2,000,000. 

71. 31. The South Sea year: The South Sea Company was 
organized in 1711 to engage in South American commerce. 
Great numbers of people in a fever of speculation invested their 
money in the stock and in that of smaller bubble companies 
which had sprung up. In the year 1720, to which Macaulay 
refers, the price of South Sea Company stock rose to 1000 pounds 
a share and then dropped to 135 pounds. The smaller com- 
panies went to pieces. Thousands of families were ruined. 

72. 21. To file a bill in Chancery against them: to make a 
written complaint or petition to a court of equity, setting forth 
all the facts and circumstances upon which the complaint is 
founded, and praying for equitable relief. 

73. 5. The Roman proconsul: Lucullus, proconsul in Asia 
Minor from 74 to 66 B.C., one of the ablest of Roman generals. 



NOTES 125 

He defeated Mithridates, King of Pontus, and Tigranes, King 
of Armenia. When superseded by Pompey, through the jeal- 
ousy of politicians at Rome, he retired from public life, and 
spent the rest of his days in the enjoyment of the great fortune 
that he had acquired. 

73. 9. Camelopards: giraffes. 

73. 9. The Spanish viceroy: If Macaulay has in mind any 
particular viceroy, he probably means Cortez or Hernando 
Pizarro, borther of the conqueror of Pern. 

73. 11. Sumpter-horses: baggage horses. 

73. 25. A massacre surpassing in atrocity: the massacre of 
Patna. See note on p. 3, 1. o. 

73. 32. The servants of the Company obtained a monopoly 
of the internal trade: They did this in the following way. Tolls 
and duties were imposed on goods transported by roads and 
rivers. By special permit, the Company's goods were exempt 
from these charges. The servants of the Company used the 
Company's permit to escape the payment of duties on their 
own private goods. As a result the native merchants could 
not compete with their privileged rivals and were driven out 
of business. 

74. 14. The little finger . . . thicker than the loins: see 
1 Kings xii. 10. 

74. 30. Palanquin: For definition and illustration, see The 
Century or Webster's Dictionary. 

75. 29. Cabal: For meaning and Macaulay's own comment 
on the word, see The Standard or The Century Dictionary. 

75. 29. Sepoys . . . kept in order only by wholesale execu- 
tions: The first sepoy mutiny occurred at Patna in 1764. Twenty 
of the mutineers were executed by being blown from the guns. 
Other mutinies occurred from time to time. The great uprising 
known as The Mutiny, which threatened to drive the English 
out of India, took place in 1857, just one hundred years after 
Plassey. Students of the essays on Clive and Hastings will be 
interested in reading of the thrilling events of this period. Ac- 
counts of The Mutiny will be found in any good history of 
Great Britain. Some of the events of the time are vividly por- 
trayed in Mrs. Steele's novel, On the Face of the Waters. 

76. 7. Verres: a Roman praetor who oppressed and plundered 
the Sicilians. They accused him before the Roman Senate, and 



126 NOTES 

Cicero prosecuted him. Pizarro: Francisco Pizarro (1470-1541), 
a Spanish adventurer, in 1531 invaded Peru, treacherously seized 
and killed the reigning monarch, Atahualpa, and subjugated the 
country. He was assassinated in 1541. See note on p. 3, 1. 6. 

77. 2. Till the event of the election should be known: In 
what sense is event used? How does the derivation of the word 
help you to understand this old use of it? 

77. 22. Infant: The word is used here in the sense that it 
has in law, viz., minor, not yet of age. The new nabob, Nujum- 
ud-Dowlah, was twenty years old. Macaulay understates the 
size of the bribe paid to the English for putting him on the 
throne. The Governor and Council received 200,000 pounds. 

79. 2. He had chosen the good part : See Luke x. 42. 

80. 22. Proconsuls, propraetors, procurators: Proconsuls and 
propraetors, after serving in Rome as consuls and praetors, 
served as military and civil governors of provinces. A 
procurator was a financial agent or manager in an imperial 
province. 

81. 33. Some of the retrenchments which had been ordered: 
Officers on field duty were allowed extra pay, known as batta. 
After Plassey Meer Jaffier had granted double batta. This 
double allowance had been continued until the officers came to 
look upon it almost as a matter of right. When Clive, in obe- 
dience to instructions from the Directors, gave orders that the 
double batta should be discontinued, the conspiracy which 
Macaulay describes was formed. 

82. 23. Cashiered: dismissed. 

83. 11. The name of Clive quelled all opposition: Macaulay's 
statement is misleading. In October of the preceding year 
(1764), seven months before Clive's arrival at Calcutta, the 
English under Major Munro had severely defeated the Nabob 
and his allies at Buxar. They had followed up this success 
with such vigour that the Nabob threw himself on the mercy of 
his. conquerors. Cf. note, p. 3, 1. 9. 

83. 33. Such terms as the new governor chose to dictate: 
Clive dealt leniently with the Nabob. He allowed him to retain 
nearly all of his dominions, but required him to pay the expenses 
of the war and to open his territory to British trade. 

83. 22. Ricimers: Count Ricimer, or Rikimer, was a German 
general who was the real ruler of Rome from 456 to 472 a.d. 



NOTES 127 

He was known as the King-maker, because he set up and deposed 
four puppet-emperors. 

83. 22. Odoacer: Odoacer or Odovaker, another German 
general, ruled Italy from 476 to 493 a.d. He did not dare call 
himself King of Italy, but he induced Zeno, the Emperor of the 
East, to appoint him as his nominal lieutenant. 

83. 28. Theodoric, the king of the East Goths (or Ostro- 
goths), invaded Italy in 489, and after four years of fighting 
conquered and killed Odoacer. Until his death in 526, he ruled 
Italy in the name of the eastern emperor, although he was not 
in any real sense subordinate to him. 

83. 29. Byzantium: Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern 
Roman Empire. 

84. 7. The revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar: These 
revenues were estimated at more than three million pounds a 
year. Out of this income the Company was to pay annually a 
rent of 260,000 pounds to the Mogul, and a salary or pension 
of 530,000 pounds to the Nabob of Bengal. 

84. 9. The last drivelling Chilperics and Childerics of the 
Merovingian line: The Merovingians, so called from Merovius 
or Merowig, the first of the line, were kings of the Franks from 
the middle of the fifth to the middle of the eighth century. 
Under the strong rule of Clovis, the third of the line, the Franks 
became the first power in western Europe; and although on the 
death of Clovis the empire was divided into four petty kingdoms, 
a kind of unity was preserved and the nation continued to hold 
its position of supremacy. But the later Merovingians were 
kings only in name, for the real control of the government had 
passed into the hands of the Mayors of the Palace, who had 
become a kind of hereditary prime minister. In 720, Chilperic 
II of Neustria (northwestern France) was recognized as the 
nominal king by Charles Martel, who ruled the empire and 
saved it and Europe from the Saracens by his great victory 
near Tours in 732. Childeric III was the last of the Merovin- 
gians. Pepin (or Pippin), the Short, son of Charles Martel, 
crowned him king of Neustria in 742, and ten years later, with 
the approval of the Pope, deposed him and had himself made 
king of the Franks. On Pepin's death in 768 , his son Charles, 
afterwards known as Charlemagne (Charles the Great), came to 
the throne. See p. 14, 1. 13, and note. 



128 NOTES 

87. 14. Farmer-general: In France before the Revolution 
the state did not collect the taxes, but sold the right of collec- 
tion to private individuals, known as revenue farmers or farmers- 
general. Many of these men grew rich by paying the state as 
little money as possible and collecting from the people as much 
as possible. 

87. 18. Jacobins: The Jacobins were a revolutionary society 
in France at the time of the Revolution, so called because they 
met in the convent of the Jacobin or Dominican Friars, who in 
turn had received their name from the fact of their meeting in 
the church of St. Jacques in Paris. Observe, however, that 
Burke, in the passage referred to, applies the term to the English, 
not to the French radicals. 

87. 30. Rotten borough: Cf. note, p. 34, 1. 20. 

88. 11. Lord-Lieutenant: The term means either (1) the 
viceroy of Ireland, or (2) an important county official who orig- 
inally levied and led the forces in time of war, and now appoints 
the justices of the peace and issues minor military commissions. 
In which of these senses does Macaulay use the title? 

88. 13. Domesday Book: a book containing the record of the 
statistical survey of England made by William the Conqueror 
twenty years after the Conquest. It contains the names of the 
chief land owners, the extent and values of estates, etc. 

88. 23. Turcaret: the chief character in Le Sage's comedy, 
Tur caret, written in 1709. He is rich, unprincipled, and foolish, 
and is duped by a gay baroness to whom he makes love during 
the absence of his wife. 

88. 23. Monsieur Jourdain: the chief character in Moliere's 
comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. He is a wealthy merchant 
who, like Mackenzie's family mentioned below, " excites derision 
by an awkward mimicry of the manners of the great." 

88. 30. The Dilettante: Dilettante here means a lover of the 
fine arts. A society of dilettanti was established in 1734 by 
several gentlemen who wished to introduce a taste for the fine 
arts into England. The word has come to mean a dabbler hi 
art, or a superficial amateur. 

88. 31. The Maccaroni: In the eighteenth century, maccaroni 
was a name for a fop or dandy. For the origin of this meaning 
see The Century Dictionary. 

89. 4. Foote: an actor and playwright of dive's time. In 



NOTES 129 

1772 he produced a comedy called The Nabob, to which Macau- 
lay refers. 

89. 9. His chairmen: What were they? For illustration, see 
" sedan " in The Standard or The Century Dictionary. 

89. 11. Jaghires, or jaghirs, were land revenues assigned with 
the power to collect or administer. See p. 65, 1. 3, and note. 

89. 12. Mackenzie: Henry Mackenzie (1 745-1831) was a 
Scotch writer, remembered now chiefly as the author of The 
Man of Feeling, a novel which enjoyed a great vogue in its day. 
Macaulay refers to a letter signed "Margery Mushroom" in 
No. 36 of a periodical called The Lounger, which was published 
in Edinburgh in 1 785-1 786. 

89. 16. Cowper in that lofty expostulation: The passage to 
which Macaulay refers is in the poem called Expostulation* 
11. 364-375: 

" Hast thou, though suckled at fair Freedom's breast, 
Exported slavery to the conquered East? 
Pulled down the tyrants India served with dread, 
And raised thyself, a greater, in their stead? 
Gone thither armed and hungry, returned full, 
Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul, 
A despot big with power obtained by wealth, 
And that obtained by rapine and by stealth? 
With Asiatic vices stored thy mind, 
But left their virtues and thine own behind; 
And, having trucked thy soul, brought home the fee, 
To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee? " 
89. 23. Sixty years ago: About what year? 

89. 33. Berkeley Square: in London. 

90. 1. Claremont: an estate in Surrey which Clive purchased. 
90. 5. Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom: see note above on 

p. 89, 1. 12. 

90. 14. Sybarite: an inhabitant of Sybaris, a Greek city in 
southern Italy, noted for its luxury. Hence Sybarite has come 
to mean a luxurious person, a voluptuary. 

90. 20. Sir Matthew Mite: a character in Foote's comedy,. 
The Nabob. He is a wealthy East Indian merchant. 

90. 25. Black stories were circulated: see p. 86, 11. 13-26. 

91. 6. Johnson: Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great 
literary dictator of the eighteenth century. He is said to have 



I3P NOTES 

described Clive as "a man who had acquired his fortune by 
such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut 
his own throat." 

91. 7. Brown: afterwards head gardener at Hampton Court 
and Windsor. 

91. 20. William Huntington: a notorious sensational preacher 
who gave himself the title, S.S. (Sinner Saved). 

92. 26. Engrossing: buying up, or as we say in America, 
cornering. 

93. 9. Corn factors: wholesale grain dealers. 

93. 11. Adam Smith (17 23-1 790): England's first great 
political economist, author of The Wealth of Nations. Smith's 
comments on the private trade of the Company's servants may 
'be found in Book IV, chapters 5 and 7. 

93. 33. Lord Chatham had meditated a bold attack on the 
Company: He had thought of transferring the government of 
India from the Company to the crown. In a letter written in 
1759, Clive had suggested this plan to Pitt. Almost one hun- 
dred years later, in 1858, the plan was adopted. 

94. 13. The Middlesex election: see note on p. 69, 1. 22. 
94. 28. George Grenville: see note on p. 69, 1. 21. 

94. 28. Government: the governing party, the party in 
power. 

94. 30. Opposition: the party or parties out of power. 

94. 32. Lord Rockingham, a leader of the conservative 
Whigs, was prime minister in 1765 and again in 1782. It was 
in his first ministry that the American Stamp Act, which had 
been passed in the Grenville ministry, was repealed. 

95. 3. Those members who were returned by himself: those 
who were elected from boroughs which he controlled. 

96. 11. He had been treated like a sheep-stealer : Clive made 
this statement in a speech in the House of Commons. 

96. 32. Rose: adjourned. 

97. 33. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland: In Grayfriars Church, 
Dumfries, in 1306, Robert Bruce killed John Comyn, whom he 
suspected of treachery. 

97. 33. Maurice the deliverer of Germany: Maurice, Duke 
of Saxony (1521-1553), for his own personal ends joined the 
emperor Charles V against the Protestants. After gaining what 
he wished, he deserted the emperor, and joining the Protestants, 



NOTES 



131 



forced the emperor to grant certain liberties to the Protestants, 
and to the German princes. 

98. 1. William the deliverer of Holland: William the Silent, 
Prince of Orange (1533-1584), under whose leadership Holland 
threw off the yoke of Spain, was suspected of murdering his wife. 
Motley says that he was guiltless of this charge and of others 
made against him. 

98. 2. His great descendant: William, Prince of Orange, 
great grandson of William the Silent, became William III of 
England in 1689. By his orders a number of Scotch Highlanders 
who had been supporters of James II were massacred in the 
valley of Glencoe because of their failure to submit to the new 
king within the prescribed time. 

98. 2. Murray: James Stuart, Earl of Murray, regent of 
Scotland and leader of the Scotch reformers. He intrigued in 
the most unscrupulous manner against his half-sister Mary, 
Queen of Scots, and made war upon her. 

98. 3. Cosmo: Cosmo de Medici, the Elder, ruler of Florence 
in the middle of the fifteenth century. With his great wealth he 
was a munificent patron of literature and the fine arts, and 
did much to revive the study of the ancient classics. But he 
was cruel and unscrupulous, and really crushed out the freedom 
of Florence. 

98. 3. Henry the Fourth of France (1589-1610): Henry of 
Navarre, the leader of the Huguenots, gave up his Protestant 
religion and embraced Catholicism in order to become king of 
France. He is also accused of gross licentiousness. 

98. 4. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia (1 689-1 725), though 
one of the greatest of rulers was a barbarian at heart, and was 
guilty of coarse and brutal conduct. 

98. 13. Lord North was prime minister from 1771 to 1782. 

98. 17. Knight of the Bath: This order of knighthood is 
said to have been instituted at the coronation of Henry IV 
in 1399. "It received this name from the fact that the can- 
didates for the honour were put into a bath the preceding even- 
ing, to denote a purification or absolution from all former stain 
and that they were now to begin a new life." — The Century 
Dictionary. 

98. 18. Henry the Seventh's chapel: in Westminster Abbey. 
For a description of this famous chapel see Irving's Sketch Book. 



132 



NOTES 



98. 26. Burgoyne . . . whose skill was at that time highly 
esteemed: Because of what event in America was his skill less 
highly esteemed? 

99. 6. Warren Hastings was governor of Bengal from 1772 
to 1774, and governor-general of India from 1774 to 1785. See 
Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings, edited by Samuel M. 
Tucker, in Longmans' English Classics. 

99. 24. Voted the major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism: 
A syllogism is the regular logical form of deductive reasoning. 
It consists of three propositions: a major premise, a minor 
premise, and a conclusion which follows from the premises. 
Burgoyne's major premise is found in the first sentence in the 
paragraph, his minor premise in the second and third. 

99. 28. The previous question: In England this is "an inge- 
nious mode of avoiding a vote on a question." Usually some 
one wishing to prevent a vote, moves " that the previous ques- 
tion be now put." He makes this motion just in order that it 
may be defeated. If it is defeated, the main question cannot 
be voted on at that time, and its opponents have disposed of 
it without going on record as against it. Although Macaulay 
says that the previous question, in this case, was carried, he 
evidently means that its purpose was accomplished by a nega- 
tive vote. In America the previous question is moved in order 
to stop debate. If it is defeated the debate continues. The 
main question is not disposed of. 

100. 5. Jenkinson: Charles Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, was 
a prominent figure during the reign of George III. He was one 
of the " King's friends," and because of the influence which he 
was thought to exert over the king, he was much hated by his 
opponents. 

100. 6. Wilkes: Cf. note, p. 69, 1. 22. 

100. 20. Lally: Count Lally, son of an Irish refugee, was 
commander-in-chief of the French troops in India during the 
Seven Years War. He mismanaged his campaign, and in 1760 
he was completely defeated by Sir Eyre Coote at Wandewash 
near Madras. 

100. 27. Voltaire: the most celebrated French authc^r of the 
eighteenth century. He wrote histories, dramas, philosophic 
treatises, romances, epics, and innumerable letters. "His mis- 
sion was to exalt and popularize reason." His influence on 



NOTES 133 

history was remarkable. " The existence, character, and career 
of this extraordinary person ..constituted in themselves a new 
and prodigious era." — John Morley. 

100. 31. Dr. Moore: John Moore who was surgeon to the 
English ambassador at Paris. He was the father of Sir John 
Moore whose burial is celebrated in Wolfe's famous poem. See 
Palgrave's Golden Treasury, No. 262. 

101. 16. Which rejoiceth exceedingly: see Job iii. 22. 

102. 20. He died by his own hand: There is much uncertainty 
about the manner of Clive's death. One story is that he took 
an overdose of laudanum; another, that he cut his throat with 
a pen-knife. The latter account seems to have been generally 
accepted at the time. Lord Stanhope, on the authority of Lord 
Shelburne, gives the following details: "It so chanced that a 
young lady, an attached friend of Clive's family, was then upon 
a visit at his house in Berkeley square, and sat writing a letter 
in one of its apartments. Seeing Lord Clive walk through, she 
called him to come and mend her pen. Lord Clive obeyed her 
summons, and taking out his pen-knife fulfilled her request; 
after which, passing on to another chamber, he turned the same 
knife against himself." 

103. 10. Which closes with the fall of Ghizni: Ghizni, or 
Ghazni, is a strongly fortified city in Afghanistan near the north- 
western frontier of India. It was captured by the English in 
1839, in the first Afghan War — just before Macaulay wrote 
this essay — but in 1842 it was recovered by the Afghans, 
who drove the English out of the country. The same year 
the city was retaken by the English but was restored to the 
Afghans. In the Third Afghan War it was captured a third 
time by the English, and again restored to the Afghans who 
still hold it. 

103. 13. Alexander, Conde, and Charles XII: Alexander the 
Great defeated an army of Persians and Greek mercenaries in 
the battle of the Granicus in Asia Minor when he was twenty- 
two years old. At the same age the Prince of Conde, afterwards 
known as the Great Conde, defeated the Spanish army at Rocroi 
in France in 1643. Charles XII of Sweden was little more than 
eighteen years of age when, with an army of eight thousand, he 
defeated a Russian army of forty thousand at Narva in 1700. 
Napoleon was twenty-four when he commanded the artillery ' 



134 NOTES 

at the seige of Toulon, and showed such unusual ability that he 
was promoted to the rank of general of brigade. 

103. 33. The threshold of Tarpeian Jove: the threshold of 
the temple of Jupiter which stood on the Tarpeian Hill, the 
lower summit of the Capitoline Hill. Here victorious generals 
offered sacrifice. 

104. 1. Those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes: In 
190 B.C., Antiochus the Great, King of Syria, was completely 
defeated at the battle of Magnesia in Asia Minor, by Lucius 
Scipio, the brother of Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hanni- 
bal. In this battle Scipio had thirty thousand troops, Antiochus 
nearly three times as many. In 65 B.C. Antiochus Asiaticus was 
ejected from the throne of Syria by Pompey. As this king 
offered no real resistance to the Romans, it seems more likely 
that Macaulay had Antiochus the Great in mind. 

Tigranes, king of Armenia, was badly defeated by Lucullus 
in the great battle of Tigranocerta in 69 B.C. The Roman 
general, however, was recalled before he could finish his work, 
and the comparatively easy task of completing the subjugation 
of the Armeinan king was left to Pompey. 

104. 25. Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe: Sir Thomas 
Munro was governor of Madras from 1820 to 1827. Mont- 
stuart Elphinstone, historian as well as statesman, was gover- 
nor of Bombay from 1819 to 1827. Sir Charles (afterwards 
Lord) Metcalfe, one of the ablest of Indian officials, was pro- 
visional governor-general of India from 1835 to 1837, part of 
the period, it will be remembered, during which Macaulay was 
in India. 

105. 1. Lucullus and Trajan: For Lucullus see p. 73, 1. 5, 
and note, and note on p. 103, 1. S3- Trajan, one of the best of 
the Roman emperors, ruled from 98 to 117 a.d. He conquered 
the Dacians, the Armenians, and the Parthians. Under his 
rule the Roman empire reached its greatest extent. 

105. 3. Turgot: controller-general of finance to Louis XVI 
(1 774-1 776). He attempted great reforms, but because of the 
weakness of the king and the influence of the courtiers, failed 
to accomplish much, and was dismissed from office. 

105. 5. Lord William Bentinck: governor-general of Bengal 
and later of India, from 1828 to 1835. In his "epoch-making 
administration" he brought about many important reforms, 



NOTES 135 

among them the abolition of the suttee or the practice of burn- 
ing a widow on her husband's funeral pile or of burying her 
alive. Macaulay, who composed the inscription on his statue 
at Calcutta, praises him as the man who "ruled India with 
eminent prudence, integrity, and benevolence," and " whose 
constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral 
character of the nation committed to his charge." 



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